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THE RAPE OF THE LOCK 



AND 



AN ESSAY ON MAN 



BY ALEXANDER POPE 



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AMERICAN • BOOK • COMPANY 
NEW YORK- CINCINNATI • CHICAGO 



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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



THE RAPE OF THE LOCK 



AND 



AN ESSAY ON MAN 



BY ALEXANDER 'POPE 



33 



EDITED BY A. M. VANDYKE, M.A. 

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, CINCINNATI HIGH SCHOOL 




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NEW YORK • : • CINCINNATI • I • CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
1898 

TWO COPIES WCE1VED 



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Copyright, 1898, by 
American Book Company. 



POPE 

W. P. I 



INTRODUCTION 



Alexander Pope was born in Lombard Street, London, May 
21, 1688. His father was a linen draper who had amassed a 
considerable fortune, and his mother, Edith, was one of the sev- 
enteen children of William Turner, a Roman Catholic gentleman, 
lord of a manor in Yorkshire. Both of the poet's parents were 
Roman Catholics. 

On account of his extremely delicate health, he was, at the age 
of eight, put under the tuition of the family priest, who taught 
him the rudiments of Latin and Greek. He had early been 
taught by an aunt to read and write. When he was twelve years 
old, he was sent to a Catholic school at Twyford, but was soon 
expelled for having written a lampoon upon one of his teachers. 

His father retired from business soon after the poet's birth, and 
removed to Binfield, on the borders of Windsor Forest. Here, 
after his expulsion from school, other tutors were provided for 
him ; but, his progress being unsatisfactory to himself, he aban- 
doned this method of study, and laid out for himself a wide and 
varied course of reading, which he pursued with great diligence. 

He began to write verse at an early age, producing his " Ode 
to Solitude " when but twelve years old. He says of himself : 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

" I lisped in numbers, and the numbers came." At the age of 
sixteen he wrote the " Pastorals," and boldly announced to the 
world that he was a poet. In 171 1 he published his " Essay on 
Criticism," which was much praised by Addison. In 171 2 ap- 
peared the mock-heroic poem " The Rape of the Lock," which 
raised him to the highest pinnacle of fame, and the " Messiah," 
in imitation of Vergil's Fourth Eclogue. Though he was now 
the most popular poet of his day, yet the pecuniary profits de- 
rived from the publication of his works had been small ; and, as 
his father had nearly exhausted his fortune, Pope, in 17 13, took 
advantage of his popularity, and issued proposals for a translation 
of the " Iliad " of Homer. The work was finished in 17 18-1720, 
and he received for it over ^5000. 

With part of this sum he purchased the villa of Twickenham, 
whither he repaired with his mother in 17 18, his father having 
died the year before. He resided at Twickenham for the re- 
mainder of his life. Here he amused himself by embellishing his 
grounds, received the homage of the famous men and women of 
his time, with whom he was in constant intercourse, and busied 
himself with his writings. 

Encouraged by his success with the " Iliad," he put forth, in 
\i 7 2 5 , in conjunction with Boone and Fenton, the "Odyssey." In 
727-1728 he and Swift together wrote the " Miscellanies." In 
728 " The Dunciad " was published anonymously, but there was 
no mistaking the author, and it was universally ascribed to Pope. 
This poem is a vindictive satire against the small celebrities of 
his day, prompted by literary jealousy. " And against whom is 
this petty irritation felt ? Against feeble journalists, brutal pam- 
phleteers, starving rimesters, a crew of hackney authors, Bohe- 
mians of ink and paper below literature. To sting and wound 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

these unfortunates gave Pope pleasure as he sat, meditating stabs, 
in his elegant villa, the resort of the rich and the noble! By 
attacking these, he lowers himself to their level " (Pattison). 

In 1 732-1 734 appeared " An Essay on Man ; " and in the last 
years of his life Pope devoted himself to writing the " Moral 
Essays," the " Imitations of Horace," the " Satires," the " Epis- 
tles," and the fourth book of " The Dunciad." 

Pope's mother died in 1733, and after that, although surrounded 
by many close friends, he began to feel himself alone. He had 
always been in ill health, and as he grew older he developed a 
fretfulness and irritability of disposition which taxed the patience 
of his companions to the utmost. 

Dr. Johnson thus describes the last days of his life : " In May, 
1744, his death was approaching. On the 6th he was all day 
delirious, which he mentioned, four days afterwards, as a suffi- 
cient humiliation of the vanity of man. He afterwards com- 
plained of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colors ; 
and one day, in the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was 
that came out from the wall. He said that his greatest incon- 
venience was inability to think. He died in the evening of the 
thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly that the attendants did 
not discern the exact time of his expiration. He was buried at 
Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument has 
been erected to him by his commentator, Warburton, bishop of 
Gloucester." 

Inasmuch as the study of Pope's works is the study of the man 
behind them, it is but just to consider his physical condition be- 
fore passing judgment. Born to a life that was "one long dis- 
ease," however much he may have been to some an object of 
contempt, he was a fit subject for charity, if not for pity. A 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

dwarf in stature, crooked in form, weak of constitution, vain be- 
cause of precocity too much flattered, irritable from ill health, he 
was hampered greatly in the race of life. In his childhood he 
was amiable and sweet-tempered ; in his maturer years he was 
" the wasp of Twickenham." Even as a child he saw that he 
was different from other children ; later he brooded over this 
difference, and perhaps accused Nature of injustice. If he was 
"crafty and malignant, vain and conceited, whimsical and pas- 
sionate," it may have been but the reaction of his futile resent- 
ment against fate, in an endeavor to revenge himself upon the 
enemies he could attack — men. Had he been of a brave or 
heroical nature, he would not have sought to recompense his own 
defects by impairing the virtue of others. 

We must not, however, overlook the good side of his charac- 
ter. Bolingbroke said of him : " I never in my life knew a man 
who had so tender a heart for his particular friends ; " and Adol- 
phus Ward, in summing up his character, says : " In compensa- 
tion for his bodily infirmities, Nature had bestowed upon him a 
brilliant eye and a melodious voice. To counteract the debili- 
tating effects of his miserable health, he had been gifted with an 
indefatigable activity of mind, aided by an extraordinary memory. 
But he also possessed an affectionate heart, to whose promptings 
he listened in all the dearest relations of life. He was the best 
of sons to both his parents, a kind brother, and to those who 
had once engaged his affections, a faithful and devoted friend. 
No suspicion perverted the attachment which united him to the 
associates of his youth, to the Carylls and Cromwells and Blounts, 
and to the friends of his manhood, to Swift and Arbuthnot and 
Gay, and to Bolingbroke, whom he thought ' superior to anything 
he had seen in human nature.' Nor was he a friend in sunshine 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

only. The exile of many was cheered by his sympathy ; and 
Swift predicted that, among all his friends, Pope would grieve 
longest for his death. His relations to women were those of 
tender friendship or affected gallantry, but they exercised no 
momentous influence upon his life. Lastly, a true generosity of 
spirit held him fast to his father's faith ; and as he became the 
tool of no political faction, so he permitted no arguments of 
self-interest to weigh against the dictates of an unaffected piety." 

Pope was undoubtedly the greatest poet of his time, that is, of 
the first half of the eighteenth century. But this period was not 
characterized by what is truly great in creative literature. Pope 
does not " hold the mirror up to nature," but he reflects in an ad- 
mirable way the moral and social ideas of his time. 

The literature of the "Augustan Age," or, as it is sometimes 
called, the " Age of Queen Anne," or the " Classical Period," 
" sought to flatter and to please, but never attempted to elevate, 
and fixed for English poetry that factitious and stilted poetic dic- 
tion which was echoed and reechoed by imitators till it became 
ashamed and vexed at its own empty reiterations." Its perfec- 
tion of form far from compensated for its want of intense feeling, 
its felicity of diction for the absence of the naturalness of expres- 
sion and the splendor of imagination which had characterized the 
preceding age. In a state of society void of earnestness and 
lofty enthusiasms, given over to conventionalities, gayeties, and 
frivolities, we might expect to find a class of writers acute, but 
not profound, sententious, but without true sentiment, brilliant, 
but incapable of sustained elegance, satirical from insincerity, 
not through moral indignation, witty, but lacking kindly humor, 
now and then pathetic with an artificial pathos lacking tears. 

Of this class of writers Pope stands at the head, " He was 



io INTRODUCTION. 

emphatically the poet of the highly artificial age in which be 
lived ; and his excellence lay in, or at least was fostered and per- 
fected by, the accordance of all his tastes and talents, of his 
whole moral and intellectual constitution, with the spirit of that 
condition of things. Not touches of natural emotion, but the 
titillation of wit and fancy, — not tones of natural music, but the 
tone of good society, — make up the charm of his poetry, the pol- 
ish, pungency, and brilliancy of which, however, in its most 
happily executed passages, leave nothing in that style to be de- 
sired " (Craik). " No writer who neglected the graces of style 
could gain acceptance by the public. This fastidiousness of the 
public ear required on the part of writers greatly increased labor. 
It was no longer possible to take a sheet of paper and write out 
your thoughts as fast as the pen would move. 'The mob of 
gentlemen who wrote with ease ' were distanced in the race. It 
was evident that, under the new standard thus set up, the prize 
would be to him who should be willing to take most trouble 
about his style. Pope at once took the lead in the race of writers, 
because he took more pains than they. He labored day and 
night to form himself for his purpose, that, viz., of becoming a 
writer of finished verse. To improve his mind, to enlarge his 
view of the world, to store up knowledge,— these were things 
unknown to him. Any ideas, any thoughts, such as custom, 
chance, society, or sect may suggest, are good enough; but each 
idea must be turned over till it has been reduced to its neatest 
and most epigrammatic expression " (Pattison). 

If to be a great poet is to be the best poet of a certain kind, 
then Pope is a great poet. Yet he is not a " poet born," but a 
" poet made," and is the product of his own efforts, as Words- 
worth is said to be the poetic product of his own ideas. He 



INTR OB UC TION. I I 

studied the old poets with avidity, grasped ideas and suggestions 
with acuteness, paraphrased with rare skill, and . polished with 
exquisite art whatever he borrowed from others, being always 
more mindful of the brilliancy of the polish than of the solid 
worth of the metal. In his method he was slow and deliberate, 
and he rewrote and corrected his work so often that the finished 
verse seemed entirely different from the first draft. Swift called 
him "paper-saving Pope," because he carried about with him 
scraps of paper upon which to jot down felicitous thoughts be- 
fore they should escape him. By his method he succeeds in 
dressing ideas and sentiments in brilliant colors and correct style. 
He is terse sometimes to obscurity, abounds in antitheses, is per- 
fect in harmony, graceful and polished in diction, though not al- 
ways perfect in rime. He employs all the known poetic artifices, 
producing thus an artful as opposed to an artistic style. It is a 
noticeable fact that he wrote nothing in blank verse, and that 
much the greater part of his work is in the ten-syllabled verse 
with riming couplets. But he carried this form of verse to a 
higher degree of perfection than did his master, Dryden, from the 
study of whose works he professed to have learned the art of 
versification, and he is therefore called " the prince of the artifi- 
cial school of poetry." 

As a translator Pope is not altogether inconspicuous, even if 
his translations do not exhale the spirit of the original. The 
mercenary motive was probably as much an incentive as the ar- 
tistic idea in his so-called translation of Homer. He had in his 
mind the writing of an epic, but his physical condition would not 
have admitted such a strain upon his vitality. Neither was he 
qualified by classical learning for the adequate performance of 
such a task, whereas all that he needed for his translation was a 



12 INTR OD UC TION. 

clew to the sense, which he could get from older versions and by 
the aid of friends. " A pretty poem," said Mr. Bentley, " but you 
must not call it Homer." But " pretty " things please ; hence 
the poem was accepted by his contemporaries and immediate suc- 
cessors as a masterpiece of poetic art, and it became the "ac- 
cepted standard of style for nearly a century." 

" The Rape of the Lock " was founded on a local incident. 
Lord Petre having, in a moment of audacity, cut off a lock of 
Miss Arabella Fermor's hair, her resentment knew no bounds, and 
led to a bitter quarrel between the two families. John Caryll, 
an intimate friend of Pope's, suggested to him that he embody 
the incident in a humorous poem, so that the tragedy might be 
" laughed away." Pope was pleased with the suggestion, and 
wrote in mock-heroic vein two cantos, describing the robbery and 
the ensuing battle. This was so well received that he added to 
it, increasing it to five cantos by introducing the machinery of the 
sylphs and the description of the game at omber. The poem was 
unsuccessful in its purpose of making peace between the two 
families. Sir George Brown (Sir* Plume) was annoyed at being 
made to talk only nonsense, and Miss Fermor was more offended 
by her characterization as Belinda than pleased at the flattery 
tendered her in the dedication. But the critics of the day and 
the public at large hailed the- poem as a masterpiece. It is gen- 
erally considered the most brilliant mock-heroic poem ever pro- 
duced. In this, more than in any other of his works, Pope shows 
something of the creative power. Hazlitt calls it " an exquisite 
specimen of filigree work, made of gauze and silver spangles." 
" The reflection of social life and manners which ' The Rape of 
the Lock ' offers is not confined t© superficial forms only. The 
most intimate sentiments of the time find their representation here. 



IN TROD UC TION. 1 3 

As an instance we may point to the mean estimation of women. 
Contempt veiled under the show of deference, a mockery of 
chivalry, its form without its spirit, — this is the attitude assumed 
towards women by the poet in this piece" (Pattison). "The 
world of fashion is displayed in its most gorgeous and attractive 
hues, and everywhere the emptiness is visible beneath the outward 
splendor. The beauty of Belinda, the details of her toilet, her 
troops of admirers, are all set forth with unrivaled grace and 
fascination, and all bear the impress of vanity and vexation. 
Nothing can exceed the art with which the satire is blended with 
the pomp — mocking, without disturbing, the unsubstantial gew- 
gaw. The double vein is kept up with sustained skill in the pic- 
ture of the outward charms and the inward frivolity of women. 

1 With varying vanities from every part 
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart,' — 

this is the tone throughout. Their hearts are toyshops. They 
reverse the relative importance of things ; the little within them 
is great, and the great little " (Elwin). 

" The Rape of the Lock " is condemned for its grossness and 
its "harsh, scornful, indelicate buffoonery," as well as for its mis- 
representation of women. But " the exquisite raillery with which 
the poem perpetually sparkles, the familiarity which it exhibits 
with the epics of antiquity, and the use to which that familiarity 
is turned, the finished ease of its style," all contribute to make 
it at least a feu cT esprit entirely unique. 

In its first form Addison called it merum sal (pure wit), and 
advised against the subsequent addition of the machinery of 
sylphs, gnomes, and nymphs. Pope ignored the advice, and 
employed these in the edition of 17 14. The immense success of 



1 4 I NT ROD UCTION. 

the poem with the additions led Pope to believe that the advice 
of Addison was not sincere ; and this belief was one of the ele- 
ments in the famous quarrel between these two eminent men. 
The poem is not read to-day with the same enjoyment as when 
it was first written. Times have changed, and with them men's 
minds and manners. 

" An Essay on Man " assumes to be a theodicy having for its 
purpose the " vindication of the ways of God to man;" and this 
expression would have been an apter title for the poem. In 
men's minds during the eighteenth century, the philosophy of 
religion was as much a matter of interesting controversy and 
conversation as was politics or mere abstract morality. It has 
been asserted very positively by at least two trustworthy authori- 
ties that the " Essay" was furnished in prose by Lord Bolingbroke, 
and that Pope merely put St. John's ideas into verse, supplying, 
of course, the poetic imagery and diction, though often, indeed, 
not departing far from the very language employed by Boling- 
broke. Its primary proposition is that " whatever is, is right." 
It aims to be didactic, and succeeds only in being dogmatic. 
Pope had no philosophical bent, and, lacking intellectual power, 
was incapable of connected logical dissertation. His imagination 
could not rise to a sublime conception of the relations of the 
Creator to his universe. He seems to have been out of sympathy 
with his theme, and possibly in this case, as in others, he chose 
his subject not because of any enthusiasm on his own part, but 
because it interested others. He aimed simply at putting into 
perfect formal expression, elaborated by brilliant epigram and 
striking antitheses, such of the sayings of the wits and polemics 
of the time as he had come upon in his reading and conversa- 
tion. That it excited a widespread interest is shown by the fact 



INTROD UC TJON. 1 5 

that it was translated into all the languages of modern Europe, 
and called forth several imitations ; but the poem is no longer 
a favorite with the general reader. Its so-called philosophy is a 
relic of an age that has passed, and whose influence has passed 
with it. By the student, however, it is to be read as an example 
of a distinct species in the evolution of our literature. 

Pope's admirers still, as in the days when he was the dominant 
leader in letters, maintain that he was the embodiment of all that 
is excellent in style, " the prince of lyric poets," " the poet of 
reason, common sense, true morality, and playful fancy ;" while 
his detractors condemn his poetry as false, unnatural, stilted, and 
altogether vicious. The student, after reading his most char- 
acteristic works, will probably reach Mr. Blair's decision that 
" within a certain limited region he has been outdone by no 
poet ;" and, whatever may be his verdict, he must not forget that, 
" in the judgment of England in the eighteenth century, the 
reputation of Pope was the most dazzling in English literature. 
It was a newer sun than Dryden, Milton, Shakespeare ; as for 
Spenser and Chaucer, they were little better than fixed stars." 



1 6 INTROD UCTION. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

1688. The Revolution of 1688. James II. dethroned. 
Pope born in Lombard Street, London, May 21. 
Death of John Bunyan, August 31. 
1700. Death of John Dryden, May 1. 

Pope wrote his " Ode to Solitude." 
1702. Pope wrote translations of Statius's "Thebais;" Ovid's 
" Epistle ; " " Sappho to Phaon." Modernized Chau- 
cer's " Merchant's Tale." 
1704. Battle of Blenheim, August 13. 

Publication of Addison's " Campaign," celebrating the 

victory of the Duke of Marlborough. 
Death of John Locke, October 28. 
1709. The first number of "The Tatler" appeared, founded by 
Richard Steele. 
Pope published his " Pastorals." 

171 1. Pope published the " Essay on Criticism." 

The first number of " The Spectator " appeared March 1, 
founded by Addison and Steele. 

The "Messiah" appeared as a number of "The Specta- 
tor." 

1 7 12. Publication of "The Rape of the Lock" in its first form. 

1 7 13. Pope's " Iliad " begun. 

Addison's tragedy " Cato " was produced. 
Publication of Pope's " Windsor Forest." 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

1 7 14. Death of Queen Anne, August 1. Accession of George I. 
Enlarged edition of "The Rape of the Lock" published. 

1 7 1 5. Publication of Pope's "Temple of Fame." 

171 7. Death of Pope's father. 

Publication of Pope's " Elo'isa to Abelard." 

1 7 18. Pope removed to Twickenham. 

1 7 19. Death of Addison, June 17. 

1725. Publication of De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe." 
Publication of Pope's Odyssey. 

1726. Pope published an edition of Shakespeare. 
Publication of Swift's " Gulliver's Travels." 

1727. Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" appeared. 

Death of George I., June 11. Accession of George II. 

1728. " The Dunciad " begun. 

Pope and Swift wrote the "Miscellanies" (1727-1728). 

1729. Death of Richard Steele, September 21. 

1730-40. Pope wrote " Moral Essays," "Epistles," and "Satires." 

1 73 1. Death of De Foe, April 26. 

1732. Death of Gay, December 4. 

"Essay on Man" begun (completed in 1734). 

1733. Death of Pope's mother. 

1735. Death of Dr. Arbuthnot, February 27. 

1741. " The Dunciad " completed. 

1742. Death of Richard Bentley, July 14. 
1 744. Death of Pope, May 30. 



THE RAPE OF THE LOCK 



DEDICATION 

TO 

MRS. 1 ARABELLA FERMOR. 



Madam : It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard 
for this piece, since I dedicate it to you. Yet you may bear me 
witness, it was intended only to divert a few young ladies, who 
have good sense and good humor enough to laugh not only at 
their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own. But as it 
was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its way 
into the world. An imperfect copy having been offered to a 
bookseller, you had the good nature, for my sake, to consent to 
the publication of one more correct. This I was forced to before 
I had executed half my design, for the machinery was entirely 
wanting to complete it. 

The machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics to 
signify that part which the deities, angels, or demons are made 
to act in a poem. For the ancient poets are in one respect like 
many modern ladies : let an action be never so trivial in itself, 
they always make it appear of the utmost importance. These 

1 In Pope's time the title " Mrs." was prefixed to the names of married 
as well as unmarried ladies. Arabella Fermor married Mr. Perkins in 17 14, 
that is, two years after the first appearance of this poem. 

21 



2 2 DEDICATION. 

machines I determined to raise on a very new and odd foundation, 
the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits. 

I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words be- 
fore a lady; but 'tis so much the concern of a'poet to have his 
works understood, and particularly by your sex, that you must 
give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms. 

The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted 
with. The best account I know of them is in a French book 
called " Le Comte de Gabalis," which, both in its title and size, 
is so like a novel that many of the fair sex have read it for one 
by mistake. According to these gentlemen, the four elements are 
inhabited by spirits which they call sylphs, gnomes, nymphs, and 
salamanders. The gnomes, or demons of earth, delight in mis- 
chief ; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are the best- 
conditioned creatures imaginable. For they say any mortals may 
enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle spirits, upon 
a condition very easy to all true adepts, an inviolate preservation 
of chastity. 

As to the following Cantos, all the passages of them are as 
fabulous as the vision at the beginning, or the transformation at 
the end, except the loss of your hair, which I always mention 
with reverence. The human persons are as fictitious as the airy 
ones ; and the character of Belinda, as it is now managed, resem- 
bles you in nothing but in beauty. 

If this poem had as many graces as there are in your person, 
or in your mind, yet I could never hope it should pass through 
the world half so uncensured as you have done. But let its for- 
tune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given me this 
occasion of assuring you that I am, with the truest esteem, 
Madam, 

Your most obedient, humble servant, 

A. Pope. 



THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 



CANTO I. 



What dire offense from amorous causes springs, 

What mighty contests rise from trivial things, 

I sing 1 — this verse to Caryll, Muse! is due: 

This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view ; 

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 5 

If she inspire, and he 2 approve my lays. 

Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel 
A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle? 
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, 
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? 10 

In tasks so bold, can little men engage, 
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage? 3 

Sol 4 through white curtains shot a timorous ray, 
And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day : 

1 Cf. Homer's Iliad, Bryant's translation, I. line I : " O goddess! sing the 
wrath of Peleus' son." Also the opening lines of Pope's translation. Also 
Vergil's ^Eneid, I. line 1 : " Anna, virumque cano. " 

2 John Caryll, an intimate friend of Pope's, who called the latter's attention 
to the quarrel between Miss Fermor and Lord Petre, and asked him to smooth 
it away by his humor. 

3 Cf. Vergil's yEneid, Connington's translation, I. lines 18, 19 : 

" Can heavenly natures nourish hate 
So fierce, so blindly passionate? " 

4 The tendency of the age was to employ classical names and titles for the 
sun, as Sol, Phcebus, Titan, etc. 

*3 



24 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto i. 

Now lapdogs give themselves the rousing shake, 1 5 

And sleepless 1 lovers, just at twelve, awake : l 

Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, 

And the pressed watch 2 returned a silver sound. 

Belinda still her downy pillow pressed, 

Her guardian sylph 3 prolonged the balmy rest: 20 

'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed 

The morning dream that hovered o'er her head ; 

A youth more glittering than a birthnight beau 4 

(That even in slumber caused her cheek to glow) 

Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, 25 

And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say : 

" Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care 
Of thousand bright inhabitants of air! 
If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought, 
Of all the nurse 5 and all the priest 5 have taught ; 30 

Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen, 
The silver token, 6 and the circled green, 7 
Or virgins visited by angel powers, 
With golden crowns and wreaths of heavenly flowers ; 
Hear and believe! thy own importance know, 35 

Nor bound thy narrow 8 views to things below. 

1 Note " sleepless " and " awake." 

2 " Pressed watch," i.e., a repeater. By pushing the stem, a bell sounded 
the quarters and half -hours. 

3 See p. 22. 

4 " Birthnight beau," i.e., a young society man present at the celebration 
in honor of a royal birthday anniversary. Exceptionally fine clothes were 
worn on such occasions. 

5 Cf. Dryden's The Hind and the Panther: "The priest continues what 
the nurse began." 

6 The silver penny which the tidy housemaid in fairy mythology found in 
her shoe. Cf. Bishop Corbet's The Fairies' Farewell. 

7 The fairy ring on the grass, supposed to mark the spot where fairies 
have danced. 

8 " Narrow " belongs to " things " as well as to " views." What is the 
effect? 



canto I.] THE RAPE OE THE LOCK. 25 

Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed, 

To maids alone and children are revealed: 1 

What though no credit doubting wits may give? 

The fair and innocent shall still believe. 40 

Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly, 

The light militia 2 of the lower sky : 

These, though unseen, are ever on the wing, 

Hang o'er the box, 3 and hover round the ring. 4 

Think what an equipage thou hast in air, 45 

And view with scorn two pages and a chair. 5 

As now your own, 6 our beings were of old, 

And once inclosed in woman's beauteous mold ; 

Thence, by a soft transition, we repair 

From earthly vehicles to these of air. 50 

Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled, 

That all her vanities at once are dead ; 

Succeeding vanities she still regards, 

And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards. 

Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, 55 

And love of omber, after death survive. 

For when the fair in all their pride expire, 

To their first elements their souls retire : 

1 Lines 37, 38. From what is this parodied? 

2 " There was scarcely yet that sharp antithesis between ' the militia' and 
' the army' which prevailed afterwards " (Hales). 

3 " Box," i.e., at the opera. 

4 " Ring," i.e., the " Row " in Hyde Park. This park embraces four hun- 
dred acres in the west of London. It became the property of the crown when 
Henry VIII. dissolved the monasteries, it being part of the holdings of 
Westminster Abbey. The Crystal Palace is in this park. 

5 A sedan chair. 

6 " As now your own," etc. " He here forsakes the Rosicrucian system, 
which in this part is too extravagant even for poetry, and gives a beautiful 
fiction of his own on the Platonic theology of the continuance of the passions 
in another state, when the mind, before its leaving this, has not been purged 
and purified by philosophy; which furnishes an occasion for much useful 
satire" (Warburton). 



26 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto i. 

The sprites Y of fiery termagants 2 in flame 

Mount up, and take a salamander's 3 name. 60 

Soft yielding minds to water glide away, 

And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea. 4 

The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome, 5 - 

In search of mischief still on earth to roam. 

The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, 65 

And sport and flutter in the fields of air. 

With varying vanities, from every part, 

They shift the moving toyshop of their heart ; 6 

Where wigs with wigs, with sword knots sword knots strive, 

Beaus banish beaus, and coaches coaches drive. 70 

This erring mortals levity may call; 7 

Oh blind to truth! the sylphs contrive it all. 

" Of these am I, who thy protection claim, 
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. 
Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air, 75 

In the clear mirror 8 of thy ruling star 
I saw, alas! some dread event impend, 
Ere to the main 9 this morning sun descend ; 
But Heaven reveals not what, or how, or where : 
Warned by the sylph, oh, pious 10 maid, beware ! 80 

1 Spirits. 

2 A name given by early Christians to a Mohammedan deity. In the 
miracle plays and moralities he appears as a boisterous character. The name 
is now applied to a turbulent woman. 

3 An amphibious animal allied to the frog. It was an old superstition 
that it could endure fire without harm. 

4 In Pope's time " tea" was pronounced tay. 5 See p. 22. * 

6 " They shift the moving toyshop," etc., i.e., readily change their affec- 
tions from one object to another. " The heart was nothing but a toyshop " 
(Addison's Spectator). 

7 Note the ambiguity. 

8 " In the clear mirror." " The language of the Platonists, the writers of 
the intelligible world of spirits, etc." (Pope). 

9 What is the meaning of this word? 

10 What different meanings has " pious "? What does it signify here? 



canto i.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 27 

This to disclose is all thy guardian can : 
Beware of all, but most beware of man ! " 

He said : when Shock, 1 who thought she slept too long, 
Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his tongue. 
'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true, 85 

Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux ; 
Wounds, charms, and ardors, were no sooner read, 
But all the vision vanished from thy head. 

And now, unveiled, the toilet 2 stands displayed, 
Each silver vase in mystic order laid. 90 

First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores, 
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers. 
A heavenly image in the glass appears, 
To that she bends, to that her eye she rears ; 
The inferior priestess, at her altar's side, 95 

Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride. 
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here 
The various offerings of the world appear ; 
From each she nicely culls with curious toil, 
And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil. 100 

This casket India's glowing gems unlocks, 3 
And all Arabia 4 breathes from yonder box. 
The tortoise 4 here and elephant 4 unite, 
Transformed to combs, the speckled and the white. 
Here files of pins extend their shining rows, 105 

Puffs, powders, patches, 5 bibles, billets-doux. 6 

1 Her lapdog. 

2 French, toile, " cloth." Trace to its present meaning. 

3 " Unlocks," i.e., discloses. 

4 Explain the figures in " Arabia," " tortoise," " elephant." 

5 " The absurd practice of wearing black patches called ' beauty spots ' 
had its origin in the necessity which a reigning belle at court had for 
concealing a blemish on her face; but the chief use was from a foolish 
notion that beauty of complexion was heightened by contrast of color" 
(Griffith). 

6 " Bibles, billets-doux." Note the association. 



28 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto i. 

Now awful beauty puts on all its arms ; 

The fair each moment rises in her charms, 

Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace, 

And calls forth all the wonders of her face : no 

Sees by degrees a purer blush arise, 

And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes. 

The busy sylphs surround their darling care, 

These set the head, and those divide the hair, 

Some fold the sleeve, while others plait the gown ; 115 

And Betty's praised far labors not her own. 



CANTO II. 

Not with more glories, in the ethereal plain, 1 

The sun first rises o'er the purpled 2 main, 

Than, issuing forth, the rival 3 of his beams 

Launched 4 on the bosom of the silver 5 Thames. 

Fair nymphs and well-dressed youths around her shone, 5 

But every eye was fixed on her alone. 

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, 

Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. 

Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 

Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those : 10 

Favors to none, to all she smiles extends ; 

Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 

Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, 

And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. 

Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, 1 5 

Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide : 

If to her share some female errors fall, 

Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. 

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, 
Nourished 6 two locks, which graceful hung behind 20 

1 " Ethereal plain." What is meant by this expression? 

2 Used transitively. 3 Who is meant? 
* In what sense here employed? 

5 An ornamental epithet. What is its signification? 

6 Cherished. 

29 



30 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto 11. 

In equal curls, and well conspired to deck, 

With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck. 

Love in these labyrinths 1 his slaves detains, 

And mighty hearts are held in slender chains. 

With hairy springes 2 we the birds betray, 25 

Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey, 

Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare, 

And beauty draws us with a single hair. 

The adventurous Baron 3 the bright locks admired ; 
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired. 30 

Resolved to win, he meditates the way, 
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray ; 
For when success a lover's toil attends, 
Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends. 4 

For this, ere Phoebus 5 rose, he had implored 35 

Propitious Heaven, and every power adored ; 
But chiefly Love — to Love an altar built, 
Of twelve vast French romances, 6 neatly gilt. 
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves ; 
And all the trophies of his former loves : 40 

With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre, 
And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire. 
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes 
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize : 
The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer, 45 

The rest, the winds dispersed in empty air. 

But now secure the painted vessel glides, 
The sunbeams trembling on the floating 7 tides ; 

1 What labyrinths? What is the allusion? 

2 Cf. Shakespeare's Hamlet, i. iii. : " Springes to catch woodcocks." 

3 Lord Petre. See Introduction, p. 12. 

4 " The end justifies the means.". 

5 See Note 4, p. 23. 

6 " Clelie," a French romance, was put forth in ten volumes of eight hun- 
dred pages each. 

7 Used transitively, i.e., the tides that float the vessel. 



canto ii.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 31 

While melting music steals upon the sky, 1 

And softened sounds along the waters die ; 50 

Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, 

Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. 

All but the sylph— with careful thoughts oppressed, 

The impending woe sat heavy on his breast. 

He summons straight his denizens 2 of air; 55 

The lucid 3 squadrons round the sails repair : 

Soft o'er the shrouds 4 aerial whispers breathe, 

That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. 

Some to the sun their insect wings unfold, 

Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ; 5 60 

Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 

Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. 

Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, 

Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, 

Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, 65 

Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes ; 

While every beam new transient colors flings, 

Colors that change whene'er they wave their wings. 6 

Amid the circle, on the gilded mast, 

Superior by the head, was Ariel placed ; 70 

His purple 7 pinions opening to the sun, 

He raised his azure wand, and thus begun : 

"Ye sylphs and sylphids, 8 to your chief give ear! 
Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons, hear! 9 

1 Cf. Gray's Progress of Poesy, line 36. 

2 Properly, dwellers within; by extension it becomes " inhabitants." 

3 What is the meaning here? Cf. " crystal," p. 26, line 75. 

4 Sails. 5 What is meant by " clouds of gold"? 

6 A charming description of the iridescence of " insect wings." 

7 " Purple" here suggests his regal position. 

8 The termination -id is feminine. 

9 Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, V. lines 600, 601 : 

" Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light, 
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers." 



32 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto ii. 

Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned 75 

By laws eternal to the aerial kind. 

Some in the fields of purest ether play, 

And bask and whiten in the blaze of day. 

Some guide the course of wandering orbs l on high, 

Or roll the planets through the boundless sky. 80 

Some, less refined, beneath the moon's pale light 

Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night, 

Or suck the mists in grosser air below, 

Or dip their pinions in the painted bow, 2 

Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main, 85 

Or o'er the glebe distill the kindly rain. 

Others on earth o'er human race preside, 

Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide : 

Of these the chief the care of nations own, 3 

And guard with arms divine the British throne. 90 

" Our humbler province is to tend the fair, 
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care ; 
To save the powder from too rude a gale, 
Nor let the imprisoned essences exhale ; 
To draw fresh colors from the vernal flowers ; 95 

To steal from rainbows, ere they drop in showers, 
A brighter wash ; to curl their waving hairs, 
Assist their blushes and inspire their airs ; 4 
Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow, 
To change a flounce, or add a furbelow. 100 

" This day, black omens threat the brightest fair 
That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care ; 

1 " Wandering orbs " here seems to mean " meteors," for " planets " is 
used in the next line. 

2 Cf. Milton's Comus, lines 300, 301 : 

" That in the colors of the rainbow live, 
And play i' the plighted clouds." 

3 Note the ambiguity. 

4 " Airs." Why used? What does it mean here? 



canto II.] THE RAPE OE THE LOCK. 33 

Some dire disaster, 1 or by force, or slight ; 

But what, or where, the Fates have wrapped in night. 

Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, 105 

Or some frail China jar receive a flaw ; 

Or lose her heart, 2 or necklace, 2 at a ball ; 

Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock must fall. 

Haste, then, ye spirits! to you? charge repair: 

The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's 3 care ; no 

The drops 4 to thee, Brillante, we consign ; 

And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine ; 

Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favorite lock ; 

Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock. 

" Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, 1 1 5 

His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large, 
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins, 
Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins ; 
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie, 
Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's 5 eye : 1 20 

Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain, 
While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain : 
Or alum styptics with contracting power 
Shrink his thin essence like a riveled flower : 
Or, as Ixion 6 fixed, the wretch shall feel 125 

The giddy motion of the whirling mill, 
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow, 
And tremble at the sea that froths below! " 

1 What is the history of this word? 

2 Note the suggestion that her heart and necklace were of equal importance. 

3 Lines 110-114. " Zephyretta," etc. Note the aptness of these names. 

4 Diamond ear pendants. 

5 Originally a small dagger. Cf. Shakespeare's Hamlet, iii. i. : 

" When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin." 

6 A Greek king, who, for boastfulness, was punished in the lower world by 
being fastened by brazen bands to an ever-revolving wheel. 

3 



34 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto ii. 

He spoke : the spirits from the sails descend ; 
Some, orb in orb, 1 around the nymph extend; 130 

Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair ; 
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear : 
With beating hearts the dire event they wait, 
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of Fate. 2 

1 In circles. 

2 What the issue will be. " Fate" is from the Latin, fart, " to speak," 
and means that which was spoken in the beginning,, and is therefore unchange- 
able. 



CANTO III. 

Close by those meads, forever crowned with flowers, 

Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers, 

There stands a structure 1 of majestic frame, 

Which from the neighboring Hampton takes its name. 

Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom 5 

Of foreign tyrants, 2 and of nymphs at home ; 

Here thou, great Anna! 3 whom three 4 realms obey, 

Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea. 5 

Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, 
To taste awhile the pleasures of a Court; 10 

In various talk the instructive hours they passed, 
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last ; 
One speaks the glory of the British Queen, 
And one describes a charming Indian screen ; 
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes ; 1 5 

At every word a reputation dies. 
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, 
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that. 

Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day, 
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray ; 20 

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, 
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine ; 

1 Hampton Court. 

2 Particularly Louis XIV., king of France from 1643 to 1 715. 

3 Anne, queen of England from 1702 to 1714. 

* What three? When were they united? • 

5 See Note 4, p. 26. Note the humorous antithesis. 

35 



36 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto hi. 

The merchant from the Exchange returns in peace, 

And the long labors of the toilet cease. 

Belinda now, whom thirst of fame 1 invites, 25 

Burns to encounter two adventurous knights, 

At omber singly to decide their doom ; 

And swells her breast with conquests yet to come. 

Straight the three bands prepare in arms to join, 

Each band the number of the sacred nine. 2 30 

Soon as she spreads her hand, the aerial guard 

Descend, and sit on each important card : 

First Ariel perched upon a Matadore, 3 

Then each according to the rank they bore ; 

For sylphs, yet mindful of .their ancient race, 35 

Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place. 

Behold, four Kings in majesty revered, 
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard ; 
And four fair Queens, whose hands sustain a flower, 
The expressive emblem of their softer power ; 40 

Four Knaves in garbs succinct, 4 a trusty band ; 
Caps on their heads, and halberts 5 in their hand ; 
And party-colored troops, a shining train, 
Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain. 6 

The skillful nymph reviews her force with care : 4 5 

Let Spades be trumps! 7 she said, and trumps they were. 

1 " Fame" is an objective genitive. 

2 Nine has always been considered a mystic number. According to the Py- 
thagoreans, man represented a full chord, or eight notes, and Deity the ninth. 

3 " The three highest trumps in omber (spadille, manille, and basto) are 
called matadores. From the terms used in the game of omber, — spadille, 
basto, matadore, punto, etc.,— there can scarcely be a doubt that the other 
nations of western Europe derived their knowledge of it from the Spaniards " 
(Chatto). 4 Tucked up. 

5 Another form is "halberds." The word is of German origin: Helle- 
barte, an ax to split a helmet. 
• 6 What is meant by " velvet plain "? 

7 " Trump," a corruption of " triumph." 



canto III.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 37 

Now move to war her sable Matadores, 1 
In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors. 
Spadillio 2 first, unconquerable lord ! 

Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board. 50 

As many more Manillio 3 forced to yield, 
And marched a victor from the verdant field. 4 
Him Basto 5 followed ; but his fate more hard 
Gained but one trump and one plebeian 6 card. 
With his broad saber next, a chief in years, 55 

The hoary Majesty of Spades appears, 
Puts forth one manly leg, to sight revealed, 
The rest, his many-colored robe concealed. 
The rebel Knave, 7 who dares his prince engage, 
Proves the just victim of his royal rage. 60 

Ev'n mighty Pam, 8 that kings and queens o'erthrew, 
And mowed down armies in the fights of Loo, 9 
Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid, 
Falls undistinguished by the victor Spade! 

Thus far both armies to Belinda yield; 65 

Now to the Baron fate inclines the field. 10 
His warlike Amazon n her host invades, 
The imperial consort of the crown of Spades. 

1 " The whole idea of this description of a game at omber is taken from 
Vida's description of a game at chess, in his poem entitled Scacchia Ludus " 
(Warburton). 

2 Personified form of the term "spadille," the ace of spades, the first 
trump in omber. 

3 Personified form of the term " manille," the deuce of trumps when 
trumps are black, the seven when they are red; the second trump in omber. 

4 What is meant by " verdant field "? See also line 44. 

5 The ace of clubs, the third trump in omber. 

6 Why " plebeian "? 

7 Commonly called the jack. 

8 In certain games the knave of clubs is called pam. 

9 The game of loo, in which the pam is the highest card. 

10 The battle. 

11 Why is " warlike " redundant? Explain " Amazon." 



38 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto hi. 

The Club's 1 black tyrant first her victim died, 

Spite of his haughty mien, and barbarous pride : 70 

What boots 2 the regal circle 3 on his head, 

His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread ; 

That long behind he trails his pompous robe, 

And of all monarchs only 4 grasps the globe? 

The Baron now his Diamonds pours apace! 75 

The embroidered King who shows but half his face, 
And his refulgent Queen, with powers combined, 
Of broken troops an easy conquest find. 
Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild disorder seen, 
With throngs promiscuous strow the level green. 5 80 

Thus- when dispersed a routed army runs, 
Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons, 
With like confusion different nations fly, 
Of various habit, and of various dye ; 

The pierced battalions disunited fall, 85 

In heaps on heaps ; one fate o'erwhelms them all. 

The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily arts, 
And wins (O shameful chance!) the Queen of Hearts. 6 
At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, 
A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look ; 90 

She sees, and trembles at the approaching ill, 
Just in the jaws of ruin, and Codille. 7 
And now (as oft in some distempered state) 
On one nice trick depends the general fate : 
An Ace of Hearts steps forth: the King unseen 95 

Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive Queen : 
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, 
And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace. 

1 " The Club's," etc. What is meant? 

2 Avails; used personally. 3 " Regal circle," crown. 
4 Alone. 5 " Level green." See lines 44, 52. 

6 " The Knave of Diamonds . . . wins," etc. What is the suggestion? 

7 A term used in omber when the opponents made more tricks than the 
omber, who then lost the pool. 



canto m.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 39 

The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky ; 

The walls, the woods, and long canals reply. 1 ioo 

O thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate, 
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate. 
Sudden these honors shall be snatched away, 
And cursed forever this victorious day. 

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, 105 
The berries 2 crackle, 3 and the mill turns round : 
On shining altars of Japan 4 they raise 
The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits 5 blaze : 
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
While China's earth 6 receives the smoking tide: 1 10 

At once they gratify their scent and taste, 
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. 
Straight hover round the fair her airy band ; 
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned, 
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes displayed, 1 1 5 

Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade. 
Coffee (which makes the politician wise, 
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes) 7 
Sent up in vapors to the Baron's brain 
New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain. 120 

Ah, cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late, 
Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate! 
Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, 
She dearly pays for Nisus' 8 injured hair! 

1 The whole description is a burlesque on the tournaments of romance. 

2 Coffee. It was the fashion to grind the coffee in the room. 

3 What kind of word is " crackle"? 

4 " Altars of Japan." Japan ware was probably introduced into England 
during the seventeenth century. 

5 What is meant by " fiery spirits "? 

6 China ware was introduced into Europe in the early part of the sixteenth 
century. 

7 Pop%, like Voltaire, was an inordinate coffee drinker. 

8 Nisus, king of Megara, had on his head a purple lock of hair, and it was 



40 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto hi. 

But when to mischief mortals bend their will, 125 

How soon they find fit instruments of ill! 
Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace 
A two-edged weapon * from her shining case : 
So ladies in romance assist their knight, 
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. 130 

He takes the gift with reverence, and extends 
The little engine on his fingers' ends ; 
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, 2 
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head. 
Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, 135 

A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair ; 
And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear ; 
Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near. 
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought 
The close recesses of the virgin's thought: 140 

As on the nosegay in her breast reclined, 
He watched the ideas rising in her mind, 
Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art, 
An earthly lover lurking at her heart. 

Amazed, confused, he found his power expired, 145 

Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired. 

The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide, 
To inclose the lock ; now joins it, to divide. 
Ev'n then, before the fatal engine closed, 
A wretched sylph too fondly interposed ; 150 

Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain 
(But airy substance soon unites again) ; 3 
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever 
From the fair head, forever, and forever! 

decreed that his city should never be conquered while that lock remained on 
his head. His daughter Scylla, in order to favor his enemy, Minos, king of 
Crete, with whom she was in love, cut off the lock while he lay asleep. In 
punishment for this crime she was transformed into a bird. l Scissors. 
2 " Spread" what? 3 Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, VI. lines 330, 331. 



canto in.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 41 

Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes, 155 

And screams of horror rend the affrighted skies. 
Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, 
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last; 1 
Or when rich China vessels, fallen from high, 
In glittering dust and painted fragments lie! 160 

" Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine, 
(The victor cried,) the glorious prize is mine! 

What time would spare, from steel receives its date, 
And monuments, like men, submit to fate ! 
Steel could the labor of the gods destroy, 165 

And strike to dust the imperial towers of Troy ; 
Steel could the works of mortal pride confound, 
And hew triumphal arches to the ground. 
What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hkirs should feel 
The conquering force of unresisted steel? 170 

1 Note the suggestion in this antithesis. 



CANTO IV. 

But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed, 

And secret passions labored in her breast. 

Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, 

Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, 

Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss, 5 

Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss, 

Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die, 

Not Cynthia when her manteau 's pinned awry, 

E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair, 

As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravished hair. 10 

For, that sad moment, when the sylphs withdrew, 
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew, 
Umbriel, 1 a dusky, melancholy sprite, 
As ever sullied the fair face of light, 

Down to the central earth, his proper scene, 1 5 

Repaired to search the gloomy Cave of Spleen. 2 

Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome, 
And in a vapor reached the dismal dome. 
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, 
The dreaded east 3 is all 4 the wind that blows. 20 

Here in a grotto, sheltered close from air, 
And screened in shades from day's detested glare, 

1 Why is the name appropriate? 

2 What trope is this description of the Cave of Spleen, with its inhabitants, 
etc. ? 

3 Why the east wind? * "All," only. 

43 



canto iv.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 43 

She sighs forever on her pensive bed, 

Pain at her side, and Megrim x at her head. 

Two handmaids wait the throne : alike in place, 25 

But differing far in figure and in face. 
Here stood Ill-nature like an ancient maid, 
Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed ; 
With store of prayers, for mornings, nights, and noons, 
Her hand is filled ; her bosom with lampoons. 2 30 

There Affectation, with a sickly mien, 
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, 
Practiced to lisp, and hang the head aside, 
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride, 
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, 35 

Wrapped in a gown, for sickness, and for show. 3 
The fair ones feel such maladies as these, 
When each new nightdress gives a new disease. 

A constant vapor o'er the palace flies ; 
Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise ; 40 

Dreadful, as hermits' dreams in haunted shades, 
Or bright, as visions of expiring maids. 
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires, 
Pale specters, gaping tombs, and purple fires : 
Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes, 45 

And crystal domes, and angels in machines. 

Unnumbered throngs on every side are seen, 
Of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen. 
Here living teapots stand, one arm held out, 
One bent ; the handle this, and that the spout : 50 

A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod 4 walks; 
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose pie talks. 

1 A nervous headache. 

2 Lines 29, 30. Note the antithesis. "Lampoon" was originally a 
drinking song; hence, because such songs usually contained personal slander 
or satire, it now signifies a scurrilous or satiric poem. 

3 The same idea is repeated in line 38, but less delicately. 

4 Cf. Homer's Iliad, Bryant's translation, XVIII. line 470. 



44 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto iv. 

Safe passed the gnome through this fantastic band, 
A branch of healing spleenwort 1 in his hand. 54 

Then thus addressed the power: " Hail, wayward Queen! 
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen ; 
Parent of vapors, and of female wit, 
Who give the hysteric or poetic fit, 
On various tempers act by various ways, 
Make some take physic, others scribble plays ; 60 

Who cause the proud their visits to delay, 
And send the godly in a pet to pray ; 
A nymph there is, that all thy power disdains, 
And thousands more in equal mirth maintains. 
But oh! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace, 65 

Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face, 
Like citron waters 2 matrons' cheeks inflame, 
Or change complexions at a losing game ; 
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads, 
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds, 70 

Or caused suspicion when no soul was rude, 
Or discomposed the headdress of a prude, 
Or e'er to lazy lapdog gave disease, 
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease ; 
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin, 3 75 

That single act gives half the world the spleen." 

The Goddess 4 with a discontented air 
Seems to reject him, though she grants his prayer. 
A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds, 
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds ; 5 80 

There she collects the force of female lungs, 
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues. 

1 A fern of the genus Asplenium— as the name suggests, a plant used for 
remedy of disorders of the spleen. 

2 Spirits distilled from the rind of citrons. Its use was a fashionable 
indulgence. 3 " Chagrin," shagreen. Explain the relation. * Who? 

5 Returning to Greece after the fall of Troy, Ulysses found shelter on the 



canto iv.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 45 

A vial next she fills with fainting fears, 

Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears. 

The gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away, 85 

Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day. 

Sunk in Thalestris' l arms the nymph he found, 
Her eyes dejected, and her hair unbound. 
Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent, 
And all the Furies issued at the vent. 90 

Belinda burns with more than mortal ire, 
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire. 
" O wretched maid! " she spread her hands, and cried 
(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied), 
" Was it for this you took such constant care 95 

The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare? 
For this your locks in paper durance 2 bound? 
For this with torturing irons 3 wreathed around ? 
For this with fillets 4 strained your tender head, 
And bravely bore the double loads of lead? 5 100 

Gods ! shall the ravisher display your hair, 
While the fops envy and the ladies stare! 
Honor forbid! at whose unrivaled shrine 
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign. 
Methinks already I your tears survey, 105 

Already hear the horrid things they say, 
Already see you a degraded toast, 6 
And all your honor in a whisper lost! 
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend? 
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend! 1 10 

island of ^Eolus, the god of the winds. Upon his departure he was given a 
bag in which were inclosed all the winds except the western. 

1 Mrs. Morley, sister of Sir George Brown, who is the "Sir Plume" 
mentioned below. 

2 What is meant here? 3 Curling tongs. 

* Headbands. 5 Curl papers fastened with lead. 

6 It was customary in so-called high society for fops to " toast " a lady of 
their set who was a noted beauty. 



46 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto iv. 

And shall this prize, the inestimable prize, 

Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes, 

And heightened by the diamond's circling rays, 

On that rapacious hand forever blaze? 

Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow, 1 1 5 

And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow; 1 

Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall, 

Men, monkeys, lapdogs, parrots, perish all!" 

She said : then raging to Sir Plume 2 repairs, 
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs 120 

(Sir Plume, of amber snuffbox justly vain, 
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane) : 
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face, 
He first the snuffbox opened, then the case, 1 24 

And then broke out—" My Lord, why, what the devil! 
Z^ds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil! 
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest— nay prithee, pox! 
Give her the hair " — he spoke, and rapped his box. 
" It grieves me much " (replied the peer again) 
"Who speaks so well should ever speak in v^in, 130 

But by this lock, this sacred lock, I swear 3 
(Which nevermore shall join its parted hair; 
Which nevermore its honors shall renew, 
Clipped from the lovely head where late it grew), 
That while my nostrils draw the vital air, 135 

This hand, which won it, shall forever wear." 
He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread 
The long-contended honors of her head. 

1 " In the sound of Bow," i.e., in the neighborhood of Grub Street. "The 
city was but one large butt for the jests of the ' wits ; ' while its immediate 
suburbs were the headquarters of that pinched and starved fraternity of 
scribblers between whom and Pope there was never peace" (Hales). 

2 Sir George Brown, Mrs. Morley's brother. He was angry that the poet 
should make him talk nothing but nonsense ; and, in truth, one could not well 
blame him " (Warburton). 

3 " In allusion to Achilles' oath in Homer's Iliad, I." (Pope). 



canto IV.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 47 

But Umbriel, hateful gnome! forbears not so; 
He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow. 140 

Then see! the nymph in beauteous grief appears, 
Her eyes half languishing, half drowned in tears; 
On her heaved bosom hung her drooping head, 
Which, with a sigh, she raised ; and thus she said : 

" Forever cursed be this detested day, 145 

Which snatched my best, my favorite curl away! 
Happy! ah, ten times happy had I been, 
If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen! 
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid, 

By love of courts to numerous ills betrayed. 150 

Oh had I rather unadmired remained 
In some lone isle, or distant northern land ; 
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way, 
Where none learn omber, none e'er taste bohea! 
There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye, 155 

Like roses that in deserts bloom and die. 
What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam? 
Oh had I stayed, and said my prayers at home! 
'Twas this the morning omens seemed to tell : 
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch box fell ; 160 
The tottering China shook without a wind, 
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind ! 
A sylph too warned me of the threats of Fate, 
In mystic visions, now believed too late! 
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs! 165 

My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares : 
These in two sable ringlets taught to break, 
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck ; 
The sister lock now sits uncouth, alone, 
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own; 170 

Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears demands, 
And tempts, once more, thy sacrilegious hands." 



CANTO V. 

She said : the pitying audience melt in tears ; 

But Fate and Jove had stopped the Baron's ears. 

In vain Thalestris with reproach assails, 

For who can move when fair Belinda fails? 

Not half so fixed the Trojan * could remain, 5 

While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain. 2 

Then grave Clarissa graceful waved her fan ; 

Silence ensued, and thus the nymph began : 

" Say, why are Beauties praised and honored most, 
The wise man's passion, and the vain man's toast? 10 

Why decked with all that land and sea afford, 
Why angels called, and angel-like adored? 
Why round our coaches crowd the white-gloved beaus? 
Why bows the side box from its inmost rows? 3 
How vain are all these glories, all our pains, 1 5 

Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains ; 
That men may say, when we the front box giace, 
1 Behold the first in virtue as in face ! ' 
Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, 
Charmed the smallpox, or chased old age away; 20 

Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce, 
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use? 
To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint, 
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint. 
But since, alas! frail beauty must decay, 25 

Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray ; 

1 The Trojan hero ^Lneas. 

2 Anna, the sister of Queen Dido, besought ^Eneas not to abandon the 
queen, who had fallen in love with him. Cf. ^Eneid, IV. line 305 et seq. 

3 The men occupied the side rows of boxes at the play, and the women, 
it seems, the front rows. See line 17. 

" 48 



canto V.] THE RAPE OE THE LOCK. 49 

What then remains, but well our power to use, 

And keep good humor still, whate'er we lose? 

And trust me, dear! good humor can prevail, 

When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail. 30 

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll ; 

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul." 

So spoke the dame, but no applause ensued ; 
Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her prude. 
"To arms, to arms! " the fierce virago cries, 35 

And swift as lightning to the combat flies. 
All side in parties, and begin the attack : 
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack ; 
Heroes' and heroines' shouts confusedly rise, 
And bass and treble voices strike the skies. 40 

No common weapons in their hands are found, 
Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound. 

So when bold Homer makes the gods engage, 
And heavenly breasts with human passions rage ; 
'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms; 45 

And all Olympus rings with loud alarms : 
Jove's thunder roars, heaven trembles all around, 
Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound : 
Earth shakes her nodding towers, the ground gives way, 
And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day! 50 

Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height 
Clapped his glad wings, and sate to view the fight : 
Propped on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey 
The growing combat, or assist the fray. 

While through the press enraged Thalestris flies, 55 

And scatters death around from both her eyes, 
A beau and witling perished in the throng, 
One died in metaphor, 1 and one in song. 
" O cruel nymph! a living death I bear," 
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair. 60 

1 Which died in metaphor? Point out the metaphor. 
4 



50 ALEXANDER POPE. [canto v. 

A mournful glance Sir Fopling upward cast, 
"Those eyes are made so killing" — was his last. 
Thus on Maeander's 1 flowery margin lies 
The expiring swan, and as he sings he dies. 

When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down, 65 

Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown ; 
She smiled to see the doughty hero slain, 
But, at her smile, the beau revived again. 

Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air, 2 
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair: 70 

The doubtful beam long nods from side to side ; 
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside. 

See fierce Belinda on the Baron flies, 
With more than usual lightning in her eyes : 
Nor feared the chief the unequal fight to try, 75 

Who sought no more than on his foe to die. 
But this bold lord with manly strength endued, 
She with one finger and a thumb subdued : 
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew, 
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw ; 80 

The gnomes direct, to every atom just, 
The pungent grains of titillating dust. 
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows, 
And the high dome reechoes to his nose. 

" Now meet thy fate," incensed Belinda cried, 85 

And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 
(The same, his ancient personage to deck, 
Her great-great-grandsire wore about his neck, 
In three seal rings ; which after, melted down, 
Formed a vast buckle for his widow's gown : 90 

Her infant grandam's whistle next it grew, 
The bells she jingled, and the whistle blew ; 

1 A river in Athens. What word is derived from it? 

2 Cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, IV. line 997: " Hung forth in Heaven his 
golden scales; " also Homer's Iliad, Bryant's translation, VIII. lines 83, 84. 



canto v.] THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 51 

Then in a bodkin graced her mother's hairs, 
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.) 1 

" Boast not my fall " (he cried), " insulting foe! 95 

Thou by some other shalt be laid as low. 
Nor think, to die dejects my lofty mind : 
All that I dread is leaving you behind ! 
Rather than so, ah, let me still survive, 
And burn in Cupid's flames — but burn alive." 100 

"Restore the Lock!" she cries; and all around 
" Restore the Lock! " the vaulted roofs rebound. 
Not fierce Othello 2 in so loud a strain 
Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain. 
But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed, 105 

And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost! 
The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain, 
In every place is sought, but sought in vain : 
With such a prize no mortal must be blessed, 
So Heaven decrees! with Heaven who can contest? 11® 

Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere, 
Since all things lost on earth are treasured there. 
There heroes' wits are kept in ponderous vases, 
And beaus' in snuffboxes and tweezer cases. 
There broken vows and deathbed alms are found, 115 

And lovers' hearts with ends of riband bound, 
Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, 
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry. 

But trust the Muse— she saw it upward rise, 
Though marked by none but quick, poetic eyes 120 

(So Rome's 3 great founder to the heavens withdrew, 
To Proculus 3 alone confessed 4 in view) : 

1 Lines 87-94. " in imitation of the progress of Agamemnon's scepter in 
Homer" (Pope). Cf. Homer's Iliad, Bryant's translation, II. lines 129-138. 

2 Cf. Shakespeare's Othello, iii. iii. 

3 Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome, was, according to the myth, 
transported to the heavens during a thunderstorm. He appeared before Julius 
Proculus, in supernatural form. * What does " confessed " mean here? 



5 a ALEXANDER POPE. [canto v. 

A sudden star, it shot through liquid air, 

And drew behind a radiant trail of hair. 

Not Berenice's locks l first rose so bright, 125 

The heavens bespangling with disheveled 2 light. 

The sylphs behold it kindling as it flies, 

And pleased pursue its progress through the skies. 

This the beau monde shall from the Mall 3 survey, 
And hail with music its propitious ray ; 130 

This the blessed lover shall for Venus take, 
And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake. 4 
This Partridge 5 soon shall view in cloudless skies, 
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes ; 6 
And hence the egregious wizard shall foredoom 135 

The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome. 

Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair, 
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere! 
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast 
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost. 140 

For after all the murders of your eye, 
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die ; 
When those fair suns shall set, as set they must, 
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust, 
This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame, 145 

And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name. 

1 Coma Berenices, an ancient asterism. 

2 Literally, with disordered hair. 

3 " The Mall " was on the north side of St. James's Park. 

4 " Rosamonda's lake" was in St. James's Park, where now stand the 
Wellington Barracks. It was filled up in 1770. The line alludes to the fact 
that many suicides by drowning occurred there. 

5 "John Partridge was a ridiculous stargazer, who in his almanacs every 
year never failed to predict the downfall of the pope and the king of France, 
then at war with the English " (Pope). 

6 What is meant by " Galileo's eyes "? 



4 



AN ESSAY ON MAN 



THE DESIGN. 

Having proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such 
as (to use my Lord Bacon's l expression) " come home to men's business and 
bosoms," I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the 
abstract, his nature and his state, since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce 
any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any crea- 
ture whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it 
is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being. 

The science of human nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few 
clear points : there are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore 
in the anatomy of the mind as in that of the body : more good will accrue to 
mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts than by study- 
ing too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of 
which will forever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these 
last, and I will venture to say they have less sharpened the wits than the 
hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice more than 
advanced the theory of morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has 
any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly op- 
posite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate 
yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect, system of ethics. 

This I might have done in prose ; but I chose verse, and even rime, for 
two reasons. The one will appear obvious : that principles, maxims, or pre- 
cepts so written both strike the reader more strongly at first and are more 
easily retained by him afterwards. The other may seem odd, but is true : I 
found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and 
nothing is more certain than that much of the force as well as grace of argu- 
ments or instructions depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat 
this part of my subject more in detail without becoming dry and tedious, or 
more poetically without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wander- 
ing from the precision or breaking the chain of reasoning. If any man can 
unite all these without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will 
compass a thing above my capacity. 

What is now published is only to be considered as a general map of man, 
marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and 
their connection, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the 
charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if 
I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry and more 
susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains and 
clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, 
and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable. 

1 Lord Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans (i 561-1626). His 
two greatest works are his Essays and Novum Organum, 

55 



56 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. I. 



ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I. 

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO THE UNIVERSE. 

Of Man in the abstract — I. That we can judge only with regard to our 
own system, being ignorant of the relation of systems and things (verse 17, 
etc.). II. That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his 
place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and 
conformable to ends and relations to him unknown (verse 35, etc.). III. 
That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the 
hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends (verse 77, 
etc.). IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more 
perfection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting 
himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection 
or imperfection, justice or injustice, of His dispensations (verse 113, etc.). 
V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or ex- 
pecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural (verse 
131, etc.). VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, 
while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the 
other the bodily qualifications of the brutes, though to possess any of the 
sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable (verse 173, 
etc.). VII. That throughout the whole visible world an universal order and 
gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a 
subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man. The 
gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason ; that reason alone 
countervails all the other faculties (verse 207). VIII. How much further 
this order and subordination of living creatures may extend, above and below 
us ; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole con- 
nected creation, must be destroyed (verse 233). IX. The extravagance, 
madness, and pride of such a desire (verse 259). X. The consequence of 
all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and 
future state (verse 281, etc., to the end). 



AN ESSAY ON MAN 



EPISTLE I. 



Awake, my St. John! 1 leave all meaner things 

To low ambition 2 and the pride of kings. 

Let us, since life can little more supply, 

Than just to look about us, and to die, 3 

Expatiate 4 free o'er all this scene of Man ; 5 

A mighty maze ! but not without a plan ; 5 

A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; 6 

Or garden, 7 tempting with forbidden fruit. 

Together let us beat this ample field, 8 

Try what the open, what the covert yield ; 10 

1 Henry St. John (pronounced Sin'jen), Viscount Bolingbroke. In the 
reign of Anne he was secretary of state, but on the accession of George I. 
exiled himself to escape a worse fate. Being pardoned, he returned from 
France in 1723, and renewed his intimacy with Pope, Swift, and other friends. 
His philosophy, both of religion and of morals, is considered unsound, but 
his style is admirable. 

2 " Low ambition," etc. The pursuit of it is far below the charms which 
belong to philosophic pursuits. 

3 Lines 3, 4. A periphrastic expression for the brevity of life. 
* Wander ad libitum. 

5 Originally " A mighty maze of walks without a plan." Why was it 
changed? 

6 Explain the metaphors. 7 " Or garden," etc. What is the allusion? 
8 Metaphors drawn from field sports were frequent with older poets and 

prose writers. Are they in good taste? 

57 



58 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. I. 

The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore, 

Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar ; 1 

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, 

And catch the manners living as they rise ; 

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can ; 1 5 

But vindicate the ways of God to man. 2 

I. Say first, of God above, or man below, 
What can we reason, but from what we know? 
Of man, what see we but his station here, 

From which to reason, or to which refer? 3 20 

Through worlds unnumbered, though the God be known, 4 

Tis ours to trace Him only in our own. 

He, who through vast immensity can pierce, 

See worlds on worlds compose one universe, 

Observe how system into system runs, 25 

What other planets circle other suns, 

What varied Being peoples every star, 

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. 

But of this frame 5 the bearings and the ties, 

The strong connections, nice dependencies, 30 

Gradations just, has thy pervading soul 

Looked through? or can a part contain the whole? 

Is the great chain, 6 that draws all to agree, 
And drawn supports, upheld by God or thee? 7 34 

II. Presumptuous man! the reason would'st thou find, 
Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? 

1 Imitated by Gray. (See Ode on the Spring, line 33.) 

2 "But vindicate," etc. Imitated from Milton. Cf. Paradise Lost, I. 
line 26. " This is a better description of the subject of the Essay than that 
of the title " (Mark Pattison). 

3 Note the bad rime in this line, and also in others that follow. 

4 Lines 21-32. These lines contain many expressions taken verbatim from 
Bolingbroke. 

5 The universe as an orderly system. 

6 " The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove " (Waller). 

7 Why ask so foolish a question? 



ep. i.] AN ESS A Y ON MAN 59 

First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, 1 

Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less? 

Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made 

Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? 40 

Or ask of yonder argent fields 2 above, 

Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove? 3 

Of systems possible, 4 if 'tis confessed, 
That Wisdom infinite 4 must form the best, 
Where all must full, or not coherent be, 5 45 

And all that rises, rise in due degree ; 
Then in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, 
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man : 6 
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) 
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong. 50 

Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, 7 
May, must be right, as relative to all. 
In human works, though labored on with pain, 8 
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain ; 
In God's, one single can its end produce; 55 

Yet serves to second too some other use. 
So man, who here seems principal alone, 
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 

1 Are " reason " and " guess " compatible? 

2 " Argent fields," Miltonic. Cf. Paradise Lost, III. line 460. 

3 Scan the line. " Sa-tel'li-tes " was so pronounced at the time. How 
many moons has Jupiter? 

4 "Systems possible," "Wisdom infinite." Are such inversions com- 
mon with Pope? 

5 See lines 243, 244. 

6 " There must be," etc. " The supposition of a scale of beings gradually 
descending from perfection to nonentity, and complete in every intermediate 
rank and degree, if not first introduced by Leibnitz, was popularized by him. 
It is the consequence of the principle which Leibnitz called lex continni " 
(Pattison). 

7 Lines 51, 52, are in accordance with the optimism of Leibnitz. See also 
lines 43, 44. 

8 " Verbatim from Bolingbroke " (Warton). 



60 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. i. 

Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal ; 

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 60 

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains 1 
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains ; 
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, 
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god : 2 

Then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend 65 

His actions', passions', being's, use and end ; 
Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled ; and why 
This hour a slave, the next a deity. 

Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault ; 
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought: 3 70 

His knowledge measured to his state and place ; 
His time a moment, and a point his space. 
If to be perfect in a certain sphere, 
What matter, soon or late, or here or there? 4 
The blessed to-day is as completely so, 75 

As who began a thousand years ago. 5 

III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, 
All but the page prescribed, their present state : 
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know : 
Or who could suffer being 6 here below? 80 

1 Lines 61-68 are an example of brilliant illustration, but not of argument. 
" Here a difficulty in the scheme of human life is not met by other positions 
that man is placed in, which might reconcile us to the difficulty, but by two 
comparisons poetically striking, but logically unsatisfying" (Bain). 

2 The sacred bull kept at Memphis, called " Apis " by the Greeks. 

3 " As he ought." Supply " to be." " Ought " for the sake of the rime, 
the /being silent in " fault." 

4 Lines 73, 74, are badly expressed and therefore obscure. 

5 Lines 75, 76. Dryden, translating Lucretius' Against the Fear of Death, 
has : 

" The man as much to all intents is dead, 
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so, 
As he who died a thousand years ago." 

6 Existence. 



ep. I.] AN ESSAY ON MAX. 61 

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 

Had he thy reason, 1 would he skip and play? 

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. 

Oh blindness to the future! kindly given, 85 

That each may fill the circle 2 marked by Heaven: 

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, 

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, 3 

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, 

And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 90 

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions 4 soar; 
Wait the great teacher, Death; 5 and God adore. 
What future bliss, 6 He gives not thee to know, 
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. 7 
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: 95 

Man never Is, but always To be blessed. 
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home, 
Re^ts and expatiates in a life to come. 

Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored mind 8 
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind ; 1 00 

His soul, proud Science never taught to stray 9 
Far as the solar walk 10 or Milky Way ; 

1 In what sense used here? 

2 " Fill the circle," i.e., do his appointed work. 

3 Cf. St. Matt. x. 29. Pope seems not to have remembered verse 31. 

4 " Trembling pinions." Explain the metaphor. Gray has, in the Elegy, 
line 127, " trembling hope." 

5 Cf. I. Cor. xiii. 12. 

6 " What future bliss " shall be, or in what it shall consist. 

7 Lines 94-96. Hope is desire with expectation, and eternal happiness 
hereafter is its proper object. 

8 These lines (99-112) have been much admrred, and justly so, because 
in them the poet seems to be moved by a genuine emotion. See also Epistle 
IV. lines 173, 174. 

9 What is the idea? 

10 " Solar walk," the path of the sun. Gray has " the solar road," Progress 
of Poesy, line 54. 



62 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. i. 

Yet simple Nature to his hope has given, 

Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven ; 

Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 105 

Some happier island in the watery waste, 

Where slaves once more their native land behold, 

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. 1 

To Be, contents his natural desire, 

He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire; 2 no 

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 

His faithful dog 3 shall bear him company. 4 

IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense, 
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ; 
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such, 115 

Say, Here He gives too little, there too much : 
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, 
Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust ; 
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care, 
Alone made perfect here, immortal there: 120 

Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod, 5 
Rejudge His justice, be the god of God. 
In pride, in reasoning pride, 6 our error lies ; 
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. 
Pride still is aiming at the blessed abodes, 7 125 

Men would be angels, angels would be gods. 
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, 
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel : 
And who but wishes to invert the laws 
Of Order, sins against the Eternal Cause. 130 

1 The line was probably suggested by the bloody Spanish conquests in 
South America. 

2 " Seraph's fire," i.e., intellectual light; wisdom. 

3 Was the dog native to the New World? 

4 See Note 8, p. 61. 

5 " The balance and the rod," judgment and punishment. 

6 Would not " unreasoning pride " be more exact? 

7 Lines 125-128 allude to the fall of the angels. Pope, following the 



ep. I.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 63 

V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, 1 
Earth for whose use? Pride" answers, " 'Tis for mine : 
For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, 
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; 
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew 135 

The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew ; 
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings ; 
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs ; 
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise ; 
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." 140 

But errs not Nature from this gracious end, 
From burning suns when livid deaths descend, 2 
When earthquakes 3 swallow, or when tempests sweep 
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? 
" No " ('tis replied), "the first Almighty Cause 145 

Acts not by partial, but by general laws ; 
The exceptions few ; some change 4 since all began : 
And what created perfect ? " — Why then man? 
If the great end be human happiness, 

Then Nature deviates; and can man do less? 150 

As much that end a constant course requires 
Of showers and sunshine, as of man's desires ; 
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, 
As men forever temperate, calm, and wise. 

opinion of a majority of the fathers of the church, ascribes the fall to pride. 
Milton makes Satan the personification of pride. 

1 Lines 131-140 form one of the most vivid passages in the poem. Pope 
is accused of bad taste in line 140. (See Isa. Ixvi. 1.) If these bounties 
of nature were not intended for man's use, what was their purpose? Cf. 
Whittier's The Barefoot Boy, lines 48-68. 

2 " Lines 142-144 are an example of energy of style, and of Pope's manner 
of compressing together many images without confusion and without super- 
fluous epithets " (Warton). 

3 Refers to the earthquake in Chile, February, 1 732, lasting twenty-seven 
days, swallowing up the city of St. Jago and most of its people. 

4 " Some change," etc., an awkward expression. 



64 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. i. 

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, 1 155 

Why then a Borgia, 2 or a Catiline? 3 

Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms, 

Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms ; 

Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind, 

Or turns young Ammon 4 loose to scourge mankind? 160 

From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs ; 

Account for moral as for natural things : 

Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit? 

In both, to reason right is to submit. 

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, 165 

Were there all harmony, all virtue here ; 
That never air or ocean felt the wind ; 
That never passion discomposed the mind. 
But all 5 subsists by elemental strife ; 6 

And passions are the elements of life. 170 

The general Order, since the whole began, 
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man. 

VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he soar, 
And little less than angel, would be more ; 7 
Now looking downward, just as grieved appears, 175 

To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears. 

1 The doctrine set lor th in lines 155-170 has been both strongly con- 
demned and defended. Pope wrote in accordance with the faith that he 
professed. 

2 Cardinal Caesar Borgia, a natural son of Pope Alexander VI., was a 
human monster. He killed his brother, and attempted to poison twelve of 
his brother cardinals. He and the pope by mistake drank of the wine. The 
pope died, but he recovered. He was killed in battle, 1507. 

3 Lucius Sergius Catiline (B.C. 108-61), author of a conspiracy which 
made his name infamous. He was killed in battle. 

4 Alexander the Great. When he visited the temple of Jupiter Ammon 
in the Libyan Desert, the priests of the temple saluted him as the son of their 
deity. 

5 The natural world or universe. 

6 The conflict of the elements, air, fire, water, earth. 

7 Cf. Ps. viii. 5. 



ef. I.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 65 

Made for his use, all creatures if he call, 

Say what their use, had he the powers of all? 

Nature to these, without profusion kind, 

The proper organs, proper powers assigned ; 180 

Each seeming want compensated of course, 

Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force ; l 

All in exact proportion to the state ; 

Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. 

Each beast, each insect, happy in its own : 185 

Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? 

Shall he alone, whom rational we call, 

Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all? 

The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) 
Is not to act or think beyond mankind ; 190 

No powers of body or of soul to share, 
But what his nature and his state can bear. 
Why has not man a microscopic eye? 2 
For this plain reason, man is not a fly. 
Say what the use, were finer optics given, 195 

To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? 
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, 3 
To smart and agonize at every pore? 
Or quick effluvia darting through the braie, 
Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 200 

If Nature thundered in his opening ears, 
And stunned him with the music of the spheres, 4 

1 " Here with degrees of swiftness," etc. " It is a certain axiom in the 
anatomy of creatures, that in proportion as they are formed for strength their 
swiftness is lessened, or as they are formed for swiftness their strength is 
abated" (Pope). 

2 " That particular expression ' microscopic eye,' and the whole reasoning 
of this astonishing piece of poetry, is taken from Locke's Essay on the Human 
Understanding, Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 12" (Wakefield). 

3 Lines 197-200 are too elliptical to be entirely clear in meaning. Express 
the thoughts in plain terms. 

* A favorite poetic conceit. It was a fancy of the Pythagoreans that the 

5 



6b ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. I. 

How would he wish that Heaven had left him still 

The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill! 1 

Who finds not Providence all good and wise, 205 

Alike in what it gives, and what denies? 

VII. Far as creation's ample range extends, 
The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends: 2 
Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race, 3 
From the green myriads in the peopled grass : 210 

What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, 
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam : 
Of smell, the headlong lioness between, 4 
And hound sagacious on the tainted green : 
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, 2 1 5 

To that which warbles through the vernal wood ! 
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! 
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line : 
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true 
From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew? 220 

How instinct varies in the groveling swine, 
Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! 
'Twixt that and reason, what a nice 5 barrier! 
Forever separate, yet forever near! 

planets, in their revolutions, sounded a note, high or low, according to their 
nearness to the sun, thus making a complete octave. Cf. Shakespeare's 
Merchant of Venice, v. i. 

1 Observe the beauty of expression. 2 Cf. lines 47, 48. 

3 " Observe the exquisite choice of expression in lines 209-222, which will 
bear comparison with the most subtle passages of Vergil. The harmony of 
the whole is interrupted, to our ear, in line 223, by the foreign accent on 
' barrier,' a word which is now thoroughly naturalized, and accented on the 
first syllable" (Pattison). 

4 "The manner of the lions hunting their prey in the deserts of Africa 
is this : At their first going out in the nighttime they set up a loud roar, and 
then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them by 
the ear, and not by the nostril. It is probable that the story of the jackal's 
hunting for the lion was occasioned by observation of this defect of scent in 
that terrible animal " (Pope). 5 Hardly distinguishable. 



ep. l] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 67 

Remembrance and reflection, how allied; 225 

What thin partitions sense from thought 1 divide ; 

And middle natures, how they long to join, 2 

Yet never pass the insuperable line! 3 

Without this just gradation could they be 

Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230 

The powers of all subdued by thee alone, 

Is not thy reason all these powers in one? 4 

VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, 
All matter quick, 5 and bursting into birth. 
Above, how high, progressive life may go! 235 

Around, how wide! how deep extend below! 
Vast chain of Being! which from God began, 6 
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, 
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 
No glass 7 can reach ; from infinite to thee, 240 

From thee to nothing. On superior powers 
Were we to press, inferior might on ours : 
Or in the full creation leave a void, 
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed : 
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, 245 

Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. 

And, if each system in gradation roll 
Alike essential to the amazing whole, 
The least confusion but in one, not all 
That system only, but the whole must fall. 250 

1 " Sense from thought," i.e., sensation from reason. 

2 " There is a gradation from man through various forms of sense, intel- 
ligence, and reason, up to beings whose rank in the intellectual system is 
even above our conceptions " (Bolingbroke). 

3 What is " the insuperable line"? 

* " Is not thy reason," etc., false psychology. Reason is not a union 
of all these powers, but is a power far different from any of them, and superior 
to them all together. 

5 " Quick" is used in its nearly obsolete sense of " alive." 

6 Cf. lines n, 34. 7 Microscope. 



68 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. i. 

Let 1 earth, unbalanced, from her orbit fly, 

Planets and suns run lawless through the sky ; 

Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, 

Being on being wrecked, and world on world ; 

Heaven's whole foundations to their center nod, 255 

And Nature tremble to the throne of God. 

All this dread Order break — for whom? for thee? 2 

Vile worm!— O madness! pride! impiety! 

IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, 
Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? 260 

What if the head, the eye, or ear repined 
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? 
Just as absurd for any part to claim 
To be another, in this general frame ; 

Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains 265 

The great directing Mind of All ordains. 3 

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 4 
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ; 
That, 5 changed through all, and yet in all the same ; 
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame; 270 

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 275 

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 

1 In this, and line 253, the word seems to be concessive, and each suc- 
ceeding line is resultant. 

2 In lines 257, 258 Pope tries to be indignant, and succeeds only in being 
bombastic. 

3 " Just as absurd," etc. If the vices and frantic passions of " a Borgia, 
or a Catiline," are necessary to the harmony of the universe, why should the 
milder passions, pity, grief, etc., be absurd? 

4 The doctrine of lines 267-280 is an expression of pure pantheism. It is 
marred only by the antithesis " hair as heart." 

5 What is the antecedent of " that "? 



KP. i.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 69 

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, 

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : l 

To Him, no high, no low, no great, no small ; 

He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all. 2 280 

X. Cease then, nor Order Imperfection name : 
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. 
Know thy own point : this kind, this due degree 
Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee. 
Submit: in this, or any other sphere, 285 

Secure 3 to be as blessed as thou canst bear : 
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, 
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. 
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; 4 
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; 290 

All Discord, Harmony not understood ; 
All partial Evil, universal Good: 5 
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, 
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. 6 

1 " The rapt seraph," etc. See Note 2, p. 62. 

2 See Note 4, p. 68. 

3 " Secure," sure; certain; confident. 

4 Lines 289-292 are excellent examples of antithesis. 

5 See p. 63, line 146. 

6 See Epistle I. line 52; Epistle IV. lines 141, 384. " Whatever is, is 
right," rather silences than satisfies. 



70 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. 11. 



ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE II. 

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO HIMSELF, 
AS AN INDIVIDUAL. 

I. The business of Man not to pry into God, but to study himself. His 
middle nature; his powers and frailties (verses 1-19). The limits of his 
capacity (verse 19, etc.). II. The two principles of man, self-love and 
reason, both necessary (verse 53, etc.). Self-love the stronger, and why 
(verse 67, etc.). Their end the same (verse 81, etc.). III. The Passions, 
and their use (verses 93-130). The predominant passion, and its force 
(verses 132-160). Its necessity in directing men to different purposes (verse 
165, etc.). Its providential use in fixing our principle and ascertaining our 
virtue (verse 177). IV. Virtue and vice joined in our mixed nature; the 
limits near, yet the things separate and evident ; what is the office of reason 
(verses 202-216). V. How odious vice in itself, and how we deceive our- 
selves into it (verse 217). VI. That, however, the ends of Providence and 
general good are answered in our passions and imperfections (verse 231, etc.). 
How usefully these are distributed to all orders of men (verse 241). How 
useful they are to society (verse 251), and to individuals (verse 263), in every 
state and every age of life (verse 273, etc.). 



EPISTLE II. 

I. Know then thyself, 1 presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is Man. 
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 2 
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great : 
With too much knowledge for the Skeptic 3 side, 5 

With too much weakness for the Stoic's 4 pride, 
He hangs between ; in doubt to act, or rest ; 
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast ; 
In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; 10 

Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 5 
Whether he thinks too little, or too much : 
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confused; 6 
Still by himself abused 7 or disabused ; 

Created half to rise, and half to fall ; 8 15 

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled : 
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! 

1 " Know then thyself." This is the oldest saying recorded in philosophy. 

2 Man is the connecting link between God and the brute creation. 

3 One that professes to doubt all things. 

* One who accepted things as they happened and made the best of his 
surroundings. The Stoic considered himself as partaker in the nature of 
God; hence "pride." 

5 This line is too condensed to be perfectly clear. 

6 Lines 13-18. Contrast Hamlet, ii. ii. : "What a piece of work is a 

man!" etc. 

1 

7 Deceived. 8 " Half to rise," etc., soul, body. 

71 



72 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. ii. 

Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides, 
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; 20 

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, 
Correct old Time, 1 and regulate the sun ; 
Go, soar with Plato to the empyreal sphere, 2 
To the first good, first perfect, and first 3 fair ; 
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, 25 

And quitting sense call imitating God ; 4 
As Eastern priests 5 in giddy circles run, 
And turn their heads to imitate the sun. 
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule — 
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! 6 30 

Superior beings, when of late they saw 7 
A mortal man unfold all Nature's law, 
Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape, 
And showed a Newton as we show an ape. 

Could he, 8 whose rules the rapid comet bind, 35 

Describe or fix one movement of his mind? 
Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend, 
Explain his own beginning or his end? 
Alas what wonder! Man's superior part 9 
Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art ; 40 

1 " Correct old Time." Refers to the reform of the calendar. The New 
Style was adopted in Germany in 1 700, but in England not until 1 752. 

2 " Empyreal sphere," i.e., the seventh sphere, or heaven, which was of 
the nature of fire. It was the home of the soul after death. 

3 " First," origin of all the others. 

4 An allusion to the Neoplatonic philosophy, which sought union with God 
by contemplation and ecstasy, through disregard of the promptings of the 
senses. 5 Worshipers of the sun god. 

6 Notice Pope's frequent use of this word. 

7 Lines 31-34 are intended as a satire on the Newtonian theory of the uni- 
verse. Newton's Principia was first published in 1687. The comparison in 
the last of these lines is not pleasing. 

8 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the famous English philosopher, who 
discovered the law of universal gravitation ; he determined also the orbits of 
comets. 9 The intellect. 



ep. ii.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 73 

But when his own great work is but begun, 
What reason weaves, by passion is undone. 

Trace Science l then, with modesty thy guide ; 
First strip off all her equipage of pride ; 2 
Deduct what is but vanity or dress, 45 

Or learning's luxury, or idleness ; 
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain, 
Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain ; 
Expunge the whole or lop the excrescent parts 
Of all our vices have created arts ; 3 50 

Then see how little the remaining sum, 
Which served the past, and must the times to come! 

II, Two principles in human nature reign; 
Self-love to urge, and Reason, to restrain ; 
Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call, 55 

Each works its end, to move or govern all : 
And to their proper operations still, 
Ascribe all good ; to their improper, ill. 

Self-love, the spring of motion, 4 acts 5 the soul ; 
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole. 60 

Man, but for that, 6 no action could attend, 
And, but for this, 7 were active to no end : 
Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, 8 
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot: 
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void, 65 

Destroying others, by himself destroyed. 

Most strength the moving principle 9 requires ; 
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. 

1 " Trace Science," i.e., follow learning. 

2 Lines 45-52. Had Pope wanted an example of the abuse of learning, 
he could have found one at home. 

3 That is, of those luxuries which our vices have created into arts. 

4 " Spring of motion," i.e., motive of action. 5 Actuates. 
6 Self-love. 7 Reason. 

8 The grammatical connections in lines 63-66 are not very close. 

9 Self-love. 



- ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. ii. 

Sedate and quiet the comparing x lies, 

Formed but to check, deliberate, and advise. 70 

Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh; 2 

Reason's at distance and in prospect lie : 

That sees immediate good by present sense ; 

Reason, the future and the consequence. 

Thicker than arguments, temptations throng, 75 

At best more watchful this, but that more strong. 

The action of the stronger to suspend, 

Reason still use, to reason still attend. 

Attention, habit and experience gains; 3 

Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains. 80 

Let subtle schoolmen 4 teach these friends to fight, 
More studious to divide than to unite ; 
And grace and virtue, sense 5 and reason split, 6 
With all the rash dexterity of wit. 

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name, 85 

Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. 
Self-love and reason to one end aspire, 
Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire ; 
But greedy that, its object would devour, 
This taste the honey, and not wound the flower : 90 

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, 
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. 

III. Modes of self-love the Passions we may call : 
'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all : 
But since not every good we can divide, 7 95 

And reason bids us for our own provide, 



1 "The comparing," i.e., reason. 

2 The meaning of lines 71, 72, is explained in the succeeding couplet. 

3 What is the subject of " gains "? 

4 "Schoolmen." Not the school divines of the Middle Ages, but all 
moralists. 

5 Senses. 

6 The rime is the only excuse for the word. 

7 Share with another. 



ep. ii.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 75 

Passions, though selfish, if their means be fair, 1 

List 2 under reason, and deserve her care : 

Those, that imparted, 3 court a nobler aim, 

Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name. 4 100 

In lazy apathy 5 let Stoics boast 
Their virtue fixed ; 'tis fixed as in a frost ; 
Contracted all, retiring to the breast ; 
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest : 
The rising tempest 6 puts in act the soul, 105 

Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. 7 
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, 
Reason the card, 8 but passion is the gale : 
Nor God alone in the still calm we find, 
He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind. no 

Passions, like elements, though born to fight, 9 
Yet, mixed and softened, in His work unite : 
These 'tis enough to temper and employ ; 
But what composes man, can man destroy? 
Suffice that reason keep to Nature's road, 115 

Subject, compound them, follow her and God. 

1 Selfish aims, if pursued honorably, deserve the approval of reason. 

2 Old form of "enlist." 

3 The word has nearly the same meaning as " divide " in line 95. 

4 If the passion, selfish though it be, imparts or brings good to others, 
it becomes a virtue. The love of glory in war, for example, if pursued in 
defense of one's country, becomes patriotism. 

5 Indifference; insensibility. The epithet "lazy" is inapt. The apathy 
of the Stoics was a calm, unruffled by circumstances,— a state of mind gained 
by rigid discipline, —the ideal of the " wise " man. 6 Passion. 

? " Parts it may ravage," etc. Alluding to the effect of a hurricane in 
purifying and restoring the atmospheric equilibrium. 

8 The dial or face of a compass. 

9 Lowell, quoting the passage lines 111-120, says : " And not seldom he 
is satisfied with the music of the verse, without much regard to fitness of 
imagery. Here Reason is represented as an apothecary compounding pills of 
' Pleasure's smiling train ' and ' the family of Pain.' In the following couplet 
he takes his illustration from the art of painting." 



7* ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. il 

Love, hope, and joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train, 

Hate, fear, and grief, the family of Pain, 

These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined, 

Make and maintain the balance of the mind : l 120 

The lights and shades, whose well-accofded strife 

Gives all the strength and color of our life. 

Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes ; 2 
And when in act they cease, in prospect rise : 
Present to grasp, and future still to find, 1 2 5 

The whole employ of body and of mind. 3 
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike ; 
On different senses, different objects strike ; 
Hence different passions more or less inflame, 
As strong or weak the organs of the frame ; 130 

And hence one Master Passion in the breast, 
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest. 4 

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, 5 
Receives the lurking principle of death ; 
The young disease, that must subdue at length; 135 

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength ; 
So, cast and mingled with his very frame, 
The mind's disease, its Ruling Passion, came ; 
Each vital humor which should feed the whole, 
Soon flows to this, in body and in soul : 140 

Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head, 
As the mind opens, and its functions spread, 
Imagination plies her dangerous art, 
And pours it all upon the peccant part. 

1 See Note 9, p. 75. 

2 " Pleasures are ever," etc. See Epistle I. lines 95, 96. 

3 " The whole employ," etc. Whether we pursue virtue or vice, pleasure 
is the end in view. 

4 Alluding to the contest in magic between Moses and the magicians of 
Pharaoh. The former seems to have been more accomplished in magic. (Cf. 
Exod. vii.) 

5 " The moment of his breath," i.e., with his first breath ; at birth. 



EP. ii.] ,LY ESSAY ON MAN 77 

Nature its mother, habit is its nurse; 145 

Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse ; 
Reason itself but gives it edge and power ; 
As Heaven's blessed beam turns vinegar more sour. 

We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway, 
In this weak queen l some favorite still obey : 150 

Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules,- 
What can she more than tell us we are fools? 
Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend, 
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend! 
Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade 155 

The choice we make, or justify it made ; 
Proud of an easy conquest all along, 
She but removes weak passions for the strong : 
So, when small humors gather to a gout, 
The doctor fancies he has driven them out. 160 

Yes, Nature's road must ever be preferred ; 
Reason is here no guide, but still a guard ; 
'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow, 
And treat this passion more as friend than foe ; 
A mightier power 3 the strong direction sends, 165 

And several 4 men impels to several ends : 
Like varying winds, by other passions tossed, 
This 5 drives them constant to a certain coast. 
Let power or knowledge, gold or glory, please, 
Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease; 170 

Through life 'tis followed, even at life's expense ; 
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence, 
The monk's humility, the hero's pride, 
All, all alike, find reason on their side. 

The Eternal Art, educing good from ill, 175 

Grafts on this passion our best principle : 

1 Reason. 2 If she does not defend as well as direct. 

3 The " Ruling Passion." 4 Different. 

5 The " mightier power." 



7# ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. ii. 

Tis thus the mercury of man 1 is fixed, 

Strong grows the virtue with his nature mixed : 

The dross cements what else were too refined, 

And in one interest body acts with mind. 180 

As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care, 
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear ; 
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot, 
Wild Nature's vigor working at the root. 
What crops of wit and honesty appear 185 

From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear! 
See anger, zeal, and fortitude supply ; 
Ev'n avarice, prudence ; sloth, philosophy ; 
Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, 
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind; 190 

Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave, 
Is emulation in the learned or brave ; 
Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, 
But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame. 

Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride) 195 

The virtue nearest to our vice allied : 
Reason the bias turns to good from ill, 
And Nero 2 reigns a Titus, 3 if he will. 
The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline, 4 
In Decius 5 charms, in Curtius 6 is divine: 7 200 

1 " Mercury of man," i.e., his instability. 

2 Nero (A.D. 54-68), Roman emperor, noted for his tyranny. 

3 Titus Vespasianus (A.D. 40-81), Roman emperor, called "the delight 
of mankind." 4 See Note 3, p. 64. 

5 P. Decius Mus, a Roman consul who, in B.C. 337, rushed to his death in 
battle because victory was foretold for the army whose general should fall. 

6 Marcus Curtius, one of Rome's legendary heroes. A chasm having been 
opened in the Forum by an earthquake in B.C. 362, it was announced by the 
soothsayers that it could not be closed till Rome's greatest treasure was cast 
in. Curtius, declaring that a brave citizen in arms was the greatest treasure 
the state could possess, leaped into the chasm, which closed after him. 

7 " There is no special propriety of allusion in lines 198-200; hence the 



kp. ii. ] AN ESS A Y ON MAN. 79 

The same ambition can destroy or save, 
And makes a patriot as it makes a knave. 

IV. This light and darkness in our chaos joined, 
What shall divide? The God within the mind. 1 

Extremes in Nature equal ends produce, 2 205 

In man they join to some mysterious use ; 
Though each by turns the other's bounds invade, 
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade, 
And oft so mix, the difference is too nice 
Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice. 210 

Fools! who from hence into the notion fall 
That vice or virtue there is none at all. 
If white and black blend, soften, and unite 
A thousand ways, is there no black or white? 
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain ; 215 

'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain. 

V. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ; 

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 

We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 3 220 

But where the extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed : 

Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed ; 4 

In Scotland, at the Orcades ; and there, 

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where. 5 

No creature owns it in the first degree, 225 

But thinks his neighbor further gone than he : 

Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone, 

Or never feel the rage, or never own ; 

passage is weak. We feel that many other names would have served the 
purpose as well " (Pattison). 

1 " The God within the mind," i.e., conscience rather than reason. 

2 Give some examples of this. 

3 There are better men and greater poets than Pope who do not think so. 
Cf. Dryden's Hind and Panther, I. 33. 

* From this illustration Pope suggests that virtue and vice are not abso- 
lute, but only relative. 5 " The Lord knows where " is in bad taste. 



80 ALEXANDER POPE. [EP. II. 

What happier natures shrink at with affright, 

The hard inhabitant contends is right. 230 

VI. Virtuous and vicious every man must be, 
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree ; 
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise ; 
And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise. 
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill ; 235 

For, vice or virtue, self directs it still ; 
Each individual seeks a several goal ; 
But Heaven's great view is one, and that the whole. 
That counterworks each folly and caprice ; 
That disappoints the effect of every vice ; 240 

That, happy x frailties to all ranks applied, 
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride, 
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief, 
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief : 
That, virtue's ends from vanity can raise, 245 

Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise ; 
And build on wants, and on defects of mind, 
The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind. 

Heaven forming each on other to depend, 
A master, or a servant, or a friend, 250 

Bids each on other for assistance call, 
Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all. 
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally 
The common interest, or endear the tie. 
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, 255 

Each home-felt joy that life inherits here ; 
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline, 
Those joys, those loves, those interests to resign ; 
Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, 
To welcome death, and calmly pass away. 260 

Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf, 

Not one will change his neighbor with himself. 

.. . sod pia 
1 Propitious, same as Latin felix, not beatus. 



ep. II.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 81 

The learned is happy nature to explore, 

The fool is happy that he knows no more ; 

The rich is happy in the plenty given, 265 

The poor contents him with the care of Heaven. 

See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, 

The sot a hero, lunatic a king ; 

The starving chemist in his golden views 

Supremely blessed, the poet in his Muse. 270 

See some strange comfort every state attend, 
And pride bestowed on all, a common friend : 
See some fit passion every age supply, 
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die. 

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, 1 275 

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw : 
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, 
A little louder, but as empty quite : 
Scarfs, 2 garters, 3 gold, 4 amuse his riper stage, 
And beads 5 and prayer books are the toys of age : 280 

Pleased with this bauble still, as that before ; 
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er. 

Meanwhile Opinion gilds with varying rays 
Those painted clouds that beautify our days ; 
Each want of happiness by hope supplied, 285 

And each vacuity of sense by pride : 
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy ; 
In folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy ; 
One prospect lost, another still we gain ; 
And not a vanity is given in vain ; 290 

Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine, 
The scale to measure others' wants by thine. 
See! and confess, one comfort still must rise; 
'Tis this, Though man's a fool, yet God is wise. 

1 Lines 275-282 would have made an admirable ending for the epistle. 

2 Badges of honor. 3 Insignia of knighthood. 
4 Wealth. 5 The rosary. 

6 



82 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. hi. 



ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE III. 

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO SOCIETY. 

I. The whole universe one system of society (verse 7, etc.). Nothing 
made wholly for itself, nor yet wholly for another (verse 27). The happiness 
of animals mutual (verse 49). II. Reason and instinct operate alike to the 
good of each individual (verse 79). III. Reason and instinct operate also to 
society in all animals (verse 109). How far society carried by instinct (verse 
115). How much further by reason (verse 129). IV. Of that which is 
called the state of nature (verse 145). Reason instructed by instinct in the 
invention of arts (verse 167), and in the forms of society (verse 177). V. 
Origin of political societies (verse 197). Origin of monarchy (verse 207). 
VI. Patriarchal government (verse 213). Origin of true religion and govern- 
ment, from the same principle of love (verse 229, etc. ). Origin of superstition 
and tyranny, from the same principle of fear (verse 239, etc.). The influence 
of self-love operating to the social and public good (verse 267). Restoration 
of true religion and government on their first principle (verse 281). Mixed 
government (verse 287). Various forms of each, and the true end of all 
(verse 301, etc.). 



EPISTLE III. 

Here then we rest: "The Universal Cause 1 

Acts to one end, but acts by various laws." 

In all the madness of superfluous health, 

The trim 2 of pride, the impudence of wealth, 

Let this great truth be present night and day ; 5 

But most be present, if we preach or pray. 

I. Look round our world ; behold the chain of love 
Combining all below and all above. 
See plastic 3 Nature working to this end, 
The single atoms each to other tend, 4 10 

Attract, attracted to, the next in place 
Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace. 
See Matter next, with various life endued, 
Press to one center still, the general good. 
See dying vegetables life sustain, 15 

See life dissolving vegetate again : 
All forms that perish other forms supply 
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die), 
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter borne, 
They rise, they break, and to that sea return. 20 

Nothing is foreign : parts relate to whole ; 
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul 

1 " In several editions this line reads: 'Learn, Dullness, learn! "The 
Universal Cause,"' etc." (Warburton). 

2 " Trim" here seems to suggest " pomp." 

3 Formative ; here properly used in an active sense. 

4 A concise statement of the attraction of cohesion, or perhaps of chemical 
affinity. 

83 



84 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. hi. 

Connects each being, greatest with the least ; 

Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast ; 

All served, all serving: nothing stands alone : 25 

The chain ! holds on, and where it ends, unknown. 

Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good, 
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food? 
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, 
For him as kindly spread the flowery lawn : 30 

Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? 
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. 
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat? 2 
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note. 
The bounding steed you pompously bestride, 35 

Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. 
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain? 
The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. 
Thine the full harvest of the golden year? 
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer : 40 

The hog, that plows not, nor obeys thy call, 
Lives on the labors of this lord of all. 

Know, Nature's children shall divide her care ; 
The fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear. 
While man exclaims, " See all things for my use! " 45 

" See man for mine! " replies a pampered goose : 
And just as short of reason he must fall, 
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all. 

Grant that the powerful still the weak control ; 
Be Man the wit and tyrant of the whole : 50 

Nature that tyrant checks ; he only knows, 
And helps, another creature's wants and woes. 
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, 
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? 

1 Cf. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite, III. line 1030, and Homer's Iliad, 
Bryant's translation, VIII. lines 20-31. 

2 Cf. Gray's Ode on the Spring, line 5. 



ep. in.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 85 

Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings? 55 

Or hears the hawk when Philomela 1 sings? 

Man cares for all : to birds he gives his woods, 

To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods ; 

For some his interest prompts him to provide, 

For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride : 60 

All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy 

The extensive blessing of his luxury. 

That very life his learned hunger craves, 

He saves from famine, from the savage saves : 

Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, 65 

And, till he ends the being, makes it blessed ; 

Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain, 

Than favored man by touch ethereal 2 slain. 

The creature had his feast of life before ; 

Thou too must perish, when thy feast is o'er! 70 

To each unthinking being, Heaven, a friend, 8 
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end : 
To man imparts it ; but with such a view 
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too : 
The hour concealed, and so remote the fear, 75 

Death still draws nearer, never seeming near. 
Great standing miracle! 4 that Heaven assigned 
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind. 

II. Whether with Reason or with Instinct blessed, 5 
Know, all enjoy that power which suits them best ; 80 

1 " Philomela," the nightingale. Read the legend of Procne and Philomela. 

2 " Touch ethereal," i.e., the lightning's stroke. " Several of the ancients, 
and many of the Orientals since, esteemed those who were struck by light- 
ning as sacred persons and the particular favorites of Heaven " (Pope). Pope 
seems to have overlooked the fact that the Latin word sacer means also " ac- 
cursed." The Greeks regarded lightning as an expression of the wrath of 
Zeus. 

3 See Epistle I. line 77, for the same idea. 

4 " Paradox " would be more exact than " miracle." 

5 The difference between reason and instinct is very elaborately set forth 



$6 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. hi. 

To bliss alike by that direction tend, 

And find the means proportioned to their end. 

Say, where full instinct is the unerring guide, 

What Pope or Council can they need beside? 

Reason, however able, cool at best, 85 

Cares not for service, or but serves when pressed, 

Stays till we call, and then not often near ; 

But honest instinct comes a volunteer, 

Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit ; 

While still too wide or short is human wit ; 90 

Sure by quick nature happiness to gain, 

Which heavier reason labors at in vain. 

This too serves always, reason never long ; 

One must go right, the other may go wrong. 

See then the acting and comparing powers 95 

One in their nature, which are two in ours ; 

And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, 

In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man. 

Who taught the nations of the field and flood 
To shun their poison, and to choose their food? 100 

Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, 
Build on the wave, 1 or arch beneath the sand? 
Who made the spider parallels design, 
Sure as Demoivre, 2 without rule or line? 
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore 105 

Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before? 

in the eighteen lines following. The felicity of expression largely countervails 
the tediousness of detail. Line 94 is as noticeable for its diction as for its 
terseness. 

1 The ancients thought that the halcyon, or kingfisher, built its nest on 
the waves. 

2 An eminent mathematician (1667— 1754), a French Huguenot. Driven 
from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he took up his resi- 
dence in London. He became an intimate friend of Newton, and a Fellow 
of the Royal Society. Newton had the highest admiration for Demoivre's 
ability and learning. 



ep. III.] AN ESSAY ON MAN 87 

Who calls the council, 1 states the certain day, 
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way? 

III. God, in the nature of each being, founds 
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds : no 

But as He framed a whole, the whole to bless, 
On mutual wants built mutual happiness: 
So from the first, eternal Order ran, 
And creature linked to creature, man to man. 
Whate'er of life all-quickening ether 2 keeps, 3 115 

Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps, 
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds 
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds. 
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood, 
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood, 120 

Each loves itself, but not itself alone, 
Each sex desires alike, till two are one. 
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend, 
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend ; 
The young dismissed to wander earth or air, 125 

There stops the instinct, and there ends the care : 
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace, 
Another love succeeds, another race. 
A longer care man's helpless kind demands ; 
That longer care contracts more lasting bands : 130 

Reflection, reason, still the ties improve, 
At once extend the interest, and the love : 
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn ; 
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn ; 4 

1 The congregating of the storks before their departure for southern climes 
is a strange phenomenon. 

2 In astronomical physics, ether is supposed to pervade space. Ancient 
philosophers regarded it as the principle of life. Cf. Vergil's ^neid, VI. 
line 728. 

3 Note lines 115-118 and 1 19-122. A sentence containing four verses is 
unusually long for Pope. In these two the thoughts are not clearly expressed. 

4 Cf. Epistle II. line 183. 



88 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. hi. 

And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise, 135 

That graft benevolence on charities. 1 

Still as one brood, and as another rose, 

These natural love maintained, habitual those : 

The last, scarce ripened into perfect man, 

Saw helpless him from whom their life began : 140 

Memory and forecast just returns engage, 

That pointed back to youth, this on to age ; 

While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combined, 

Still spread the interest and preserved the kind. 

IV. Nor think in Nature's state they blindly trod ; 145 
The state of Nature was the reign of God : 
Self-love and social at her birth began, 
Union the bond of all things, and of man. 2 
Pride then was not ; nor arts, that pride to aid ; 
Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade ; 3 150 
The same his table, and the same his bed ; 
No murder clothed him, and no murder fed. 
In the same temple, the resounding wood, 
All vocal beings hymned their equal God : 
The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed, 155 
Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest : 
Heaven's attribute was universal care, 
And man's prerogative, to rule, but spare. 

1 Affections. 

2 The social instinct was the " cohesive attraction " of the moral world. 

3 "'Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade.' The poet still 
takes his imagery from Platonic ideas. Plato had said, from old tradition, 
that during the Golden Age and under the reign of Saturn the primitive lan- 
guage in use was common to men and beasts. Moral philosophers took this 
in the popular sense, and so invented those fables which give speech to the 
whole brute creation. The naturalists understood the tradition to signify that 
in the first ages men used inarticulate sounds like beasts to express their 
wants and sensations, and that it was by slow degrees they came to the use 
of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Siculus, 
and Gregory of Nyssa" (Warburton). 



ep. in.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 89 

Ah! how unlike the man of times to come! l 
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb ; 160 

Who, foe to Nature, hears the general groan, 
Murders their species, and betrays his own. 
But just disease to luxury succeeds, 
And every death its own avenger breeds ; 
The fury passions 2 from that blood began, 165 

And turned on man a fiercer savage, man. 
See him from Nature rising slow to Art! 
To copy instinct then was reason's part ; 
Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake : 
"Go, from the creatures thy instructions take: 170 

Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield ; 
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field ; 
Thy arts of building from the bee receive ; 
Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave ; 
Learn of the little nautilus to sail, 3 175 

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. 
Here too all forms of social union find, 
And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind : 
Here subterranean works and cities see ; 
There towns aerial on the waving tree. 180 

Learn each small people's genius, policies, 
The ants' republic, and the realm of bees ; 
How those in common all their wealth bestow, 
And anarchy without confusion know ; 
And these forever, though a monarch reign, 185 

Their separate cells and properties maintain. 

1 It may suit Pope's poetic purpose to inveigh, in lines 159-166, against 
the use of animal food ; but it is well known that he entertained no such views 
as here expressed. We may suppose it is indicative of his inherent insincerity. 

2 " Fury passions." Cf. Gray's Ode on Eton College, line 61; also his 
Progress of Poesy, line 16. 

3 The idea that the nautilus lifts its feet and spreads a membrane to act as 
a sail is no longer entertained. It sometimes uses its feet, however, as oars. 



90 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. hi. 

Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state, 

Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate. 

In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw, 

Entangle justice in her net of law, 190 

And right, too rigid, harden into wrong ; 

Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. 

Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway, 

Thus let the wiser make the rest obey : 

And for those arts mere instinct could afford, 195 

Be crowned as Monarchs, or as Gods adored." 

V. Great Nature spoke ; observant man obeyed ; 
Cities were built, societies were made : 

Here rose one little state ; another near 

Grew by like means, and joined through love or fear. 200 

Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend, 

And there the streams in purer rills descend? 

What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, 

And he returned a friend, who came a foe. 

Converse and love mankind might strongly draw, 205 

When love was liberty, and Nature law. 

Thus states were formed ; the name of King unknown, 

Till common interest placed the sway in one, 

'Twas Virtue only (or in arts or arms, 

Diffusing blessings, or averting harms), 210 

The same which in a sire the sons obeyed, 

A prince the father of a people made. 

VI. Till then, by Nature crowned, each patriarch sate, 
King, priest, and parent of his growing state ; 

On him, their second Providence, they hung, 2 1 5 

Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue. 
He from the wondering 1 furrow called the food, 
Taught to command the fire, control the flood, 
Draw forth the monsters of the abyss profound, 2 
Or fetch the aerial eagle to the ground. 220 

1 Wonder-working. 2 " Abyss profound," a Miltonic expression. 



ep. III.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 91 

Till drooping, 1 sickening, 1 dying 1 they began 

Whom they revered as God to mourn as man. 

Then, looking up from sire to sire, explored 

One great first Father, and that first adored : 

Or plain tradition, that this All begun, 225 

Conveyed unbroken faith from sire to son ; 

The worker from the work distinct was known, 

And simple reason never sought but one. 

Ere wit oblique had broke that steady light, 2 

Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right; 230 

To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod, 

And owned a father when he owned a God. 

Love, all the faith and all the allegiance then ; 

For Nature knew no right divine in men, 3 

No ill could fear in God; and understood 235 

A sovereign being, but a sovereign good : 

True faith, true policy, united ran, 

That was but love of God, and this of man. 

Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone, 
The enormous 4 faith of many made for one ; 240 

That proud exception to all Nature's laws, 
To invert the world, and counterwork its cause? 
Force first made conquest, and that conquest law ; 
Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe, 
Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid, 245 

And gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made : 
She, 'midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound, 
When rocked the mountains, and when groaned the ground, 
She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray, 
To power unseen, and mightier far than they: 250 

1 These words limit " whom," in line 222, of which the antecedent is 
" patriarch," in line 213. 

2 Alludes to the effect of a prism on a ray of light. 

3 The belief in the " divine right of kings " disappeared forever in Eng- 
land in 1688. 4 Contrary to all laws or rules. 



92 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. III. 

She, from the rending earth, and bursting skies, 

Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise : 

Here fixed the dreadful, there the blessed abodes : 

Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods ; 

Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, 255 

Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust ; 

Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, 

And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe. 

Zeal then, not charity, became the guide ; 

And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride. 260 

Then sacred seemed the ethereal vault no more : 

Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore : 

Then first the Flamen 1 tasted living food ; 

Next his grim idol smeared with human blood ; 

With Heaven's own thunders shook the world below, 265 

And played the god an engine on his foe. 

So drives self-love, through just and through unjust, 
To one man's power, ambition, lucre, lust : 
The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause 
Of what restrains him, government and laws. 270 

For, what one likes, if others like as well, 
What serves 2 one will, when many wills rebel? 
How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake, 
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take? 
His safety must his liberty restrain : 275 

All join to guard what each desires to gain. 
Forced into virtue thus, by self-defense, 
Ev'n kings learned justice and benevolence : 
Self-love forsook the path it first pursued, 
And found the private in the public good. 280 

'Twas then the studious head or generous mind, 
Follower of God, or friend of humankind, 

1 A priest devoted to the service of a particular god; here simply "a 
priest." 

2 Avails, 



EP. in.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 93 

Poet or patriot, rose but to restore 

The faith and moral Nature gave l before ; 

Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new; 285 

If not God's image, yet His shadow drew ; 

Taught power's due use to people and to kings, 

Taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings, 

The less, or greater, set so justly true, 

That touching one must strike the other too : 290 

Till jarring interests of themselves create 

The according music of a well-mixed state. 

Such is the world's great harmony, that springs 

From order, union, full consent of things : 

Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made 295 

To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade ; 

More powerful each as needful to the rest, 

And, in proportion as it blesses, blessed ; 

Draw to one point, and to one center bring 

Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king. 300 

For forms of government let fools contest ; 
Whate'er is best administered is best : 
For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight ; 
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right ; 
In faith and hope the world will disagree, 305 

But all mankind's concern is charity : 
All must be false that thwart this one great end : 
And all of God that bless mankind, or mend. 

Man, like the generous vine, supported lives : 
The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives. 310 
On their own axis as the planets run, 
Yet make at once their circle round the sun ; 
So two consistent motions act the soul ; 
And one regards itself, and one the whole. 

Thus God and Nature linked the general frame, 315 

And bade self-love and social be the same. 
1 Given. 



94 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 



ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE TV. 

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS. 

I. False notions of happiness, philosophical and popular, answered from 
verse 19 to 26. II. It is the end of all men, and attainable by all (verse 29). 
God intends happiness to be equal ; and to be so it must be social, since all 
particular happiness depends on general, and since He governs by general, not 
particular, laws (verse 35). As it is necessary for order and the peace and 
welfare of society that external goods should be unequal, happiness is not 
made to consist in these (verse 49). But notwithstanding that inequality, 
the balance of happiness among mankind is kept even by Providence, by the 
two passions of hope and fear (verse 67). III. What the happiness of in- 
dividuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and 
that the good man has here the advantage (verse 77). The error of imputing 
to Virtue what are only the calamities of Nature, or of Fortune (verse 93). 
IV. The folly of expecting that God should alter His general laws in favor of 
particulars (verse 117). V. That we are not judges who are good; but that 
whoever they are, they must be happiest (verse 127, etc.). VI. That ex- 
ternal goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or de- 
structive of, virtue (verse 163). That even these can make no man happy 
without virtue: instanced in riches (verse 181); honors (verse 189); nobility 
(verse 201) ; greatness (verse 207) ; fame (verse 227) ; superior talents (verse 
249, etc.). With pictures of human infelicity in men possessed of them all 
(verse 259, etc.). VII. That virtue only constitutes a happiness whose object 
is universal and whose prospect eternal (verse 299). That the perfection of 
virtue and happiness consists in a conformity to the order of Providence here, 
and a resignation to it here and hereafter (verse 317, etc.). 



EPISTLE IV. 

O Happiness! our being's end and aim! 

Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy name: 

That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, 1 

For which we bear to live, or dare to die ; 

Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, 2 5 

O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool and wise. 

Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below, 3 

Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow? 

Fair opening to some Court's propitious shine, 4 

Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine? 5 10 

Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels 6 yield, 

Or reaped in iron harvests 7 of the field? 

Where grows ? — where grows it not? If vain our toil, 

We ought to blame the culture, not the soil : 

Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere, 8 1 5 

'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere : 

'Tis never to be bought, but always free ; 

And, fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee. 

1 "The eternal sigh," i.e., the "hope" (cf. Epistle I. line 95) that 
" springs eternal in the human breast." 2 Cf. Epistle II. line 125. 

3 Note the metaphor. Is it satisfactory? 

4 " Shine," a substantive; " sheen " but for the rime. 

5 " In the flaming mine," a poetic fancy that the diamond illuminates the 
mine. 

6 Poetic fame. Parnassus was a mountain in Greece, sacred to Apollo and 
the Muses. 

7 " Iron harvests," etc., military glory. Cf. Dryden's All for Love, i. i. : 
" The noble harvest of the field." 

8 " Sincere," i.e., pure; unalloyed. 

95 



96 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 

I. Ask of the learn'd the way? the learn'd are blind; 
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind j 1 20 
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease, 

Those call it pleasure, and contentment these ; 

Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain ; 

Some swelled to gods, confess e'en virtue vain ; 

Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, 25 

To trust in everything, or doubt of all. 

Who thus define it, say they more or less 
Than this, that happiness is happiness? 

II. Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave; 

All states 2 can reach it, 3 and all heads 4 conceive ; 30 

Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell ; 
There needs but thinking right, and meaning well ; 
And, mourn our various portions as we please, 
Equal is common sense, and common ease. 

Remember, Man, "the Universal Cause 35 

Acts not by partial, but by general laws ; " 
And makes what happiness we justly call 
Subsist, not in the good of one, but all. 
There's not a blessing individuals find, 
But someway leans and hearkens to the kind : 40 

No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, 
No caverned hermit, rests self-satisfied : 
Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, 
Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend : 
Abstract what others feel, what others think, 45 

All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink: 
Each has his share ; and who would more obtain, 
Shall find, the pleasure pays not half the pain. 

1 "Though all the schools were agreed that happiness was the supreme 
good, yet there was a vast variety of opinion as to what happiness consisted 
in. Varro (B.C. 116-28) reckoned two hundred and eighty-eight different 
opinions which had been, or might be, held on the point " (Pattison). 

2 Conditions. 3 "It," i.e., " Nature's path." 4 Intellects. 



ep. iv.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 97 

Order is Heaven's first law ; and this confessed, 
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest, 50 

More rich, more wise ; but who infers from hence 
That such are happier, shocks all common sense. 
Heaven to mankind impartial we confess, 
If all are equal in their happiness : 

But mutual wants this happiness increase ; 55 

All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace. 1 
Condition, 2 circumstance, is not the thing; 
Bliss is the same in subject or in king, 
In who obtain defense, or who defend, 
In him who is, or him who finds a friend : 60 

Heaven breathes through every member of the whole 
One common blessing, as one common soul. 
But fortune's gifts, if each alike possessed, 
And each were equal, must not all contest? 
If then to all men happiness was meant, 65 

God in externals could not place content. 3 

Fortune her gifts may variously dispose, 
And these be happy called, unhappy those ; 
But Heaven's just balance equal will appear, 
While those are placed in hope, and these in fear: 70 

Not present good or ill, the joy or curse, 
But future views of better, or of worse. 

O sons of earth ! attempt ye still to rise, 
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies? 4 
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys, 75 

And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. 

1 Cf. Epistle I. line 169. 2 Rank. 

3 " Content" in this sense usually pronounced con' tent ; literally, " that 
which is contained;" hence, the attributes which constitute the meaning of a 
thing. Thus the old Greek philosophers were agreed in calling happiness the 
end of human life, but they differed in their definition of happiness, that is, 
in interpreting its content. See lines 19-28, and Note 1, p. 96. 

4 Alluding to the Titans' attempt to scale Olympus. 

7 



98 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 

III. Know, all the good that individuals find, 
Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind, 
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, 
Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence. 80 

But health consists with temperance alone ; 
And peace, O Virtue! peace is all thy own. 
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain ; 
But these 1 less taste 2 them, as they worse 3 obtain. 
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight, 85 

Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right? 
Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed, 
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first? 
Count all the advantage 4 prosperous vice attains, 
Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains : 90 

And grant the bad what happiness they would, 
One they must want, which is, to pass for good. 

Oh blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below, 
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe! 5 
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best, 95 

Best knows the blessing, and will most be blessed. 
But fools the good alone unhappy call, 6 
For ills or accidents that chance to all. 
See Falkland 7 dies, the virtuous and the just! 
See godlike 8 Turenne 9 prostrate on the dust! 100 

1 The bad. 2 Enjoy. 

3 " Worse," here an adverb limiting " obtain," means " by worse means." 

4 Mere temporal success. 

5 That is, that bliss accompanies vice, and woe, virtue. 

6 Note the ambiguity of the line. 

7 Lord Falkland (1610-1643), an English politician, at first sided with the 
popular party against the king, but afterwards seceded from that party. He 
was killed at the first battle of Newbury. 

8 The epithet is of doubtful propriety. 

9 "Henry, Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1675), marshal of France, after 
commanding the French armies in the latter part of the Thirty Years' War, 
raised his military fame to the highest pitch, without preserving it intact from 



ep. iv.] AN ESSAY OX MAN. 99 

See Sidney 1 bleeds amid the martial strife! 

Was this their virtue, or contempt of life? 

Say, was it virtue, more though Heaven ne'er gave, 

Lamented Digby! 2 sunk thee to the grave? 

Tell me, if virtue made the son expire, 105 

Why, full of days and honor, lives the sire? 3 

Why drew Marseilles' good bishop 4 purer breath, 

When Nature sickened, and each gale was death? 

Or why so long (in life if long can be) 

Lent Heaven a parent to the poor and me? 5 no 

What makes all physical or moral ill? 
There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will. 6 
God sends not ill ; if rightly understood, 
Or partial ill is universal good, 7 

Or change admits, or Nature lets it fall, 1 1 5 

Short, and but rare, till man improved it all. 

IV. Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause 
Prone for His favorites to reverse His laws? 

the blot of barbarous conduct, in the Alsatian and Palatinate campaigns de- 
veloped out of the peace of Westphalia. He was struck dead by a cannon 
ball at Salzbach in Baden in 1675, and was buried among the kings of France 
at St. Denis " (Ward). 

1 Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), famous English author and general, was 
mortally wounded in the glorious but useless cavalry charge at Zutphen in 
1586. He wrote the Arcadia, a Defence of Poesie, and one hundred and 
eight sonnets, remarkable for beauty of diction and nobility of sentiment. 
The anecdote of his generosity to a dying soldier is well known. 

2 The Hon. Robert Digby, third son of Lord Digby; he died in 1726. 

3 The sire was Sir William Digby, who died in 1752. 

4 " M. de Belsunce (1671-1755) was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. 
In the plague of that city, in the year 1720, he distinguished himself by his 
zeal and activity, being the pastor, the physician, and the magistrate of his 
flock, while that horrid calamity prevailed. After receiving extraordinary 
distinctions in recognition of his services both from the pope and King Louis 
XV., he died in the year 1755 " (Warton). 

5 Edith Pope, mother of the poet, died at the age of ninety-one, in 1733, the 
year this poem was finished. She was noted for her piety and charity. 

6 See also Epistle I. line 150. 7 Cf. Epistle I. line 292. 



ioo ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 

Shall burning ^Etna, if a sage requires, 1 

Forget to thunder, and recall her fires? 120 

On air or sea new motions be impressed, 

Oh blameless Bethel! 2 to relieve thy breast? 

When the loose mountain trembles from on high, 

Shall gravitation cease, if you go by? 

Or some old temple, nodding to its fall, 125 

For Chartres' 3 head reserve the hanging wall? 

V. But still this world (so fitted for the knave) 
Contents us not. A better shall we have? 
A kingdom of the just then let it be : 

But first consider how those just agree. 130 

The good must merit God's peculiar care ; 
But who, but God, can tell us who they are? 
One thinks on Calvin 4 Heaven's own spirit fell; 
Another deems him instrument of hell ; 

1 " One of many accounts of the death of the philosopher Empedocles 
(B.C. 444) was that he threw himself into one of the craters of ./Etna. But 
the words ' if a sage requires ' are not appropriate to the story of Empedocles, 
who did not approach the volcano from curiosity, but was anxious to be taken 
for a god. The expression would suit Pliny, the Roman naturalist, who lost 
his life (A.D. 79) by approaching too close to the sulphuric fumes during an 
eruption. But then it was not yEtna, but Vesuvius, which was fatal to Pliny, 
in the great eruption by which Herculaneum and Pompeii were destroyed. 
It is possible that we have here a confused allusion to two different facts,— 
to the legend of Empedocles, and the authentic account of the death of Pliny " 
(Pattison). 

2 Hugh Bethel, of Yorkshire, one of Pope's intimate friends. He was 
afflicted with asthma. Pope alludes to this passage in a letter written to Mr. 
Bethel shortly after the death of Pope's mother : " I have now too much mel- 
ancholy leisure, and no other care but to finish my Essay on Man. There 
will be in it but one line that will offend you (I fear), and yet I will not 
alter it or omit it, unless you come to town and prevent it." 

3 "A man infamous for all manner of vices, who acquired an immense 
fortune by a constant attention to the vices, wants, and follies of mankind " 
(Pope). He died in 1731. 

4 John Calvin (1 509-1 564), celebrated Protestant reformer and theologian, 
born in Picardy, France. He was a man of remarkable erudition. 



ep. iv.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 101 

If Calvin feel Heaven's blessing, or its rod, 135 

This cries, There is, and that, There is no God. 

What shocks one part will edify the rest, 

Nor with one system can they all be blessed. 

The very best will variously incline, 

And what rewards your virtue, punish mine. 140 

Whatever is, is right. — This world, 'tis true, 

Was made for Caesar — but for Titus too; 1 

And which more blessed? who chained his country, say, 

Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day? 2 

" But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed." 145 
What then? is the reward of virtue bread? 
That vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil ; 
The knave deserves it when he tills the soil, 
The knave deserves it when he tempts the main, 
Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain. 150 

The good man may be weak, be indolent ; 
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content. 
But grant him riches, your demand is o'er? 
" No— shall the good want health, the good want power? " 
Add health and power, and every earthly thing: 155 

" Why bounded power? why private? why no king? 3 
Nay, why external for internal given? 
Why is not man a god, and earth a heaven? " 
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive 
God gives enough, while He has more to give ; 160 

Immense the power, immense were the demand ; 
Say, at what part of nature will they stand? 

1 Caesar is the type of the bad, and Titus (see Note 3, p. 78) of the good. 
The allusion is to Addison's Cato, v. i. 

2 Suetonius (Life of Titus, § 8) relates that, recollecting at supper that he 
had conferred no favor on any one during the day, Titus exclaimed: " My 
friends, I have lost a day!" 

3 " Why private," etc. Why is he a private person? Why is he not a 
king? 



102 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 

VI. What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, 
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy, 1 
Is virtue's prize. A better would you fix? 165 

Then give humility a coach and six, 
Justice a conqueror's sword, or truth a gown, 
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown. 2 
Weak, foolish man! will Heaven reward us there 
With the same trash 3 mad mortals wish for here? 170 

The Boy and Man an individual makes, 4 
Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes? 
Go, like the Indian, in another life 5 
Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife ; 
As well as dream such trifles are assigned, 175 

As toys and empires, for a godlike mind. 
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring 
No joy, or be destructive of the thing: 
How oft by these at sixty are undone 

The virtues of a saint at twenty-one! 180 

To whom can Riches give repute, or trust, 
Content, or pleasure, but the good and just? 
Judges and senates have been bought for gold, 
Esteem and love were never to be sold. 
O fool! to think God hates the worthy mind, 185 

The lover and the love of humankind, 
Whose life is healthful and whose conscience clear, 
Because he wants 6 a thousand pounds a year. 

Honor and shame from no condition rise : 
Act well your part, there all the honor lies. 190 

1 Cf. Gray's Ode on Eton College, line 44. 

2 " Public spirit " seems to be here used in the sense of ambition. Desire 
for a crown is cured by its possession. 

3 " Trash," i.e., coach and six, sword, gown, crown. The passage savors 
of affectation. 

4 " Makes," i.e., becomes; rightly singular. 

5 Cf. Epistle I. line 99. 6 Lacks. 



-EP. iv.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 103 

Fortune in men has some small difference made, 

One flaunts * in rags, one flutters l in brocade j 1 

The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned, 

The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned. 194 

" What differ more " (you cry) " than crown and cowl? " 

I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool. 

You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk, 

Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk, 

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow : 

The rest is all but leather 2 or prunella. 2 200 

Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood 

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood, 

Go! and pretend your family is young; 

Nor own your fathers have been fools so long. 

What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? 205 

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. 3 

Look next on Greatness ; say where Greatness lies. 
" Where, but among the heroes and the wise? " 
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed, 
From Macedonia's madman 4 to the Swede; 5 210 

1 " Flaunts . . . flutters," for exactness should be interchanged. Pope 
first wrote : 

" Oft of two brothers, one shall be surveyed 
Flutt'ring in rags, one flaunting in brocade." 

2 " Leather " and " prunella" suggest the cobbler and the parson. The 
gown of the latter was made of stuff called prunella. 

3 Henry Howard (15 1 7-1 547), earl of Surrey, was a soldier, scholar, and 
poet. He was beheaded on a false charge of treason. 

4 " Macedonia's madman," i.e., Alexander the Great (B.C. 356-323), 
king of Macedon. " Truth is here sacrificed to alliteration. The overthrow 
of the Persian empire was not the enterprise of a madman. Pope, however, 
was not peculiar in forming this erroneous estimate" (Pattison). 

5 "The epithet 'madman,' which has adhered to Alexander the Great, 
ought to have been joined to 'the Swede.' The instance of Charles XII. 
(1682-1718), king of Sweden, is more appropriate than most of the historical 
examples pitched upon by Pope in the Essay. Charles XII. 's extraordinary 
career was still recent; he was killed at Frederikshald, 1718" (Pattison). 



104 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. IV. 

The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find, 

Or make an enemy of all mankind ! 

Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, 

Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose. 1 

No less alike the politic and wise ; 215 

All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes : 

Men in their loose unguarded hours they take, 

Not that themselves are wise, but others weak. 

But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat ; 

'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great: 220 

Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave, 

Is but the more a fool, the more a knave. 2 

Who noble ends by noble means obtains, 

Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains, 

Like good Aurelius 3 let him reign, or bleed 225 

Like Socrates, 4 that man is great indeed. 

What's Fame? A fancied life in others' breath, 
A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death. 
Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown, 
The same (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own. 230 

All that we feel of it begins and ends 
In the small circle of our foes or friends ; 
To all beside as much an empty shade 
An Eugene 5 living, as a Caesar dead ; 

1 If Pope endeavored to express contempt, he succeeded only in being 
vulgar. Alexander was a man of farseeing political sagacity. 

2 The " wickedly wise " is " the more a knave ; " the " madly brave " is 
" the more a fool." 

3 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (A.D. 121-180), emperor of Rome from 161 
to his death. " Whatever may have been the errors of judgment into which he 
was led, his character remains one of the purest and noblest in the history of 
the empire of which he witnessed the first decline " (Ward). 

4 Socrates did not " bleed. " What was the manner of his death? 

5 Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), a celebrated Austrian general. 
" He was the commander of the imperial armies in the War of the Spanish 
Succession, and the joint hero with Marlborough of Blenheim and Malpla- 
quet" (Ward). 



ep. iv.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 105 

Alike or when, or where they shone, or shine, 235 

Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine. 

A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod; 1 

An honest man's the noblest work of God. 2 

Fame but from death a villain's name can save, 3 

As Justice tears his body from the grave ; 240 

When what to oblivion better were resigned, 

Is hung on high, to poison half mankind. 

All fame is foreign, but of true desert ; 

Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart : 

One self-approving hour whole years outweighs 245 

Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas; 

And more true joy Marcellus 4 exiled feels, 

Than Caesar with a senate at his heels. 

In Parts 5 superior what advantage lies ? 
Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? 250 

'Tis but to know how little can be known ; 
To see all others' faults, and feel our own : 

1 " Alluding to the pen with which the wit writes, and the baton which 
was the symbol of authority of the general" (Pattison). Elwin gives a 
different interpretation. He says: " Pope is deriding fame in general, and 
divides famous men into two classes, — ' heroes and the wise.' The wise are 
compared to feathers, which are flimsy and showy ; and the heroes, who are 
the scourges of mankind, are compared to rods." The line, though often 
quoted, is too condensed to be clear. 

2 This line is copied by Burns in The Cotter's Saturday Night. It is one 
of a multitude of sayings which, because of their striking form, are mistakenly 
accepted for truth. 

3 Lines 239-242 allude to Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton, whose bodies 
were disinterred and hanged on a gibbet, January 30, 166 1. It may well be 
believed that Pope hated them. 

4 " M. Marcellus, one of the most determined opponents of Julius Caesar, 
had fled to Mitylene after the battle of Pharsalus ; and as he dared not him- 
self solicit pardon, it was asked of the dictator by his friends, Cicero making 
in his behalf an oration conceived in a very different spirit from that which 
Pope attributes to the orator's client. Its genuineness has, however, been 
doubted. Marcellus was assassinated at Athens on his way home " (Ward). 

5 " Parts," i.e., intellectual acquirements. 



106 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 

Condemned in business or in arts to drudge, 

Without a second, or without a judge : 

Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land? 255 

All fear, none aid you, and few understand. 

Painful preeminence! yourself to view 

Above life's weakness, and its comforts too. 

Bring then these blessings to a strict account ; 
Make fair deductions ; see to what they mount : 260 

How much of other each is sure to cost ; 
How each for other oft is wholly lost ; 
How inconsistent greater goods with these ; 
How sometimes life is risked, and always ease: 
Think, and if still the things thy envy call, , 265 

Say, would'st thou be the man to whom they fall? 
To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly, 
Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, 1 or Sir Billy. 1 
Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life ; 

Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife. 2 270 

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon 3 shined, 
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind: 4 
Or ravished with the whistling of a name, 
See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame! 

1 It is not known who were meant by " Lord Umbra" and " Sir Billy." 

2 "Gripus," "Gripus' wife," the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, 
noted for their avarice. See lines 285-298. Read, for information as to 
Marlborough's career and character, A Short History of the English People, 
by John Richard Green. 

3 "Bacon." See Note 1, p. 55. He became lord chancellor in 1618. 
Having been accused of corruption in office, he pleaded guilty, was fined 
^40,000, sentenced to prison, and rendered incapable of holding any office 
of honor or emolument. 

4 Here again Pope sacrifices truth to his fondness for effect to be produced 
by formal expression. Bacon was the victim of partisan hatred. His venality 
was rather an error of judgment than evidence of corruption. John Morley 
says that " he had no active evil in his character." Later investigations have 
relieved his reputation of much of the odium that rested upon it in the early 
part of the eighteenth century. 



ep. iv.] AN ESSAY ON MAN. 107 

If all, united, thy ambition call, 275 

From ancient story learn to scorn them all. 

There, in the rich, the honored, famed, and great, 

See the false scale of happiness complete! 

In hearts of kings, or arms of queens, who lay, 

How happy those to ruin, these betray. 280 

Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, 

From dirt and seaweed as proud Venice 1 rose ; 

In each how guilt and greatness equal ran, 

And all that raised the hero, sunk the man : 

Now Europe's laurels on their brows behold, 2 285 

But stained with blood, or ill exchanged for gold : 

Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in ease, 

Or infamous for plundered provinces. 

O wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame 

E'er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame! 290 

What greater bliss attends their close of life? 

Some greedy minion, or imperious wife, 

The trophied arches, storied halls 3 invade, 

And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade. 

Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray, 295 

Compute the morn and evening to the clay : 

The whole amount of that enormous fame, 

A tale, that blends their glory with their shame! 

VII. Know then this truth (enough for man to know) : 
" Virtue alone is happiness below." 300 

The only point where human bliss stands still, 
And tastes the good without the fall to ill; 4 

1 " The city of Venice was built in 809, on the island of the Rialto, in the 
midst of the marshes called ' Lagune,' where the inhabitants of the great 
cities of Venetia had taken refuge from the Huns three centuries and a half 
before that date" (Ward). 

2 Lines 285-298. See Note 2, p. 106. 

3 " Storied halls," i.e., historic halls. 

4 "And tastes the good," etc., a possible allusion to the temptation of 
Adam and Eve. 



108 ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. IV. 

Where only merit constant pay receives, 

Is blessed in what it takes, and what it gives; 1 

The joy unequaled, if its end it gain, 2 305 

And if it lose, attended with no pain : 

Without satiety, though e'er so blessed, 

And but more relished as the more distressed : 

The broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears, 

Less pleasing far than virtue's very tears : 310 

Good, from each object, from each place acquired, 

Forever exercised, yet never tired ; 

Never elated, while one man's oppressed ; 

Never dejected, while another's blessed ; 

And where no wants, no wishes can remain, 315 

Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain. 

See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow ; 
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know : 
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, 
The bad must miss, the good, untaught, will find ; 320 

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, 
But looks through Nature, up to Nature's God : 3 
Pursues that chain which links the immense design, 
Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine ; 
Sees that no being any bliss can know, 325 

But 4 touches some above, and some below; 
Learns, from this union of the rising whole, 
The first, last purpose of the human soul ; 
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, 
All end, in Love of God, and Love of Man. 330 

For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, 
And opens still, and opens on his soul ; 

1 Cf. Merchant of Venice, iv. i. 

2 Lines 305-308. The style is elliptical and careless ; it lacks the first 
element of good style— clearness. 

3 " Verbatim from Bolingbroke's letters to Pope" (Warburton). 

4 " But touches," i.e., that does not touch. 



EP. IV.] AN ESSAY ON MAX. 1 09 

Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined, 

It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. 

He sees why Nature plants in man alone 335 

Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown : 

(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind 

Are given in vain, but what they seek they find ;) 

Wise is her present ; she connects in this 

His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss ; x 340 

At once his own bright prospect to be blessed, 

And strongest motive to assist the rest. 

Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, 
Gives thee to make thy neighbor's blessing thine. 
Is this too little for the boundless heart? 345 

Extend it, let thy enemies have part : 
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense, 
In one close system of benevolence : 
Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree, 
And height of bliss but height of charity. 350 

God loves from whole to parts : but human soul 
Must rise from individual to the whole. 
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; 2 
The center moved, a circle straight succeeds, 355 

Another still, and still another spreads ; 
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace ; 
His country next ; and next all human race ; 
Wide and more wide the o'erflowings of the mind 3 
Take every creature in, of every kind ; 360 

Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blessed, 
And Heaven beholds its image in his breast. 

1 " His greatest bliss " is the hope of immortality, which is to be secured 
through the operation of " his greatest virtue," benevolence. 

2 " As the small pebble," etc. The simile is frequent with poets. Pope 
uses it several times. 

3 " The o'erflowings of the mind" in its benevolence. 



no ALEXANDER POPE. [ep. iv. 

Come, then, my friend! my genius! 1 come along; 
O master of the poet, and the song! 

And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends, 365 

To man's low passions, or their glorious ends, 
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, 
To fall with dignity, with temper rise; 2 
Formed by thy converse, happily to steer 
From grave to gay, from lively to severe; 370 

Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, 
Intent to reason, or polite to please. 
Oh! while along the stream of time thy name 
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame ; 
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 375 

Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? 
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, 
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, 
Shall then this verse to future age pretend 3 
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? 380 

That, urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art, 4 
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart ; 
For Wit's false mirror, held up Nature's light ; 
Showed erring Pride, Whatever is, is right ; 
That Reason, Passion, answer one great aim ; 385 

That true Self-love and Social are the same ; 
That Virtue only makes our bliss below! 
And all our Knowledge is, Ourselves to know. 

1 Bolingbroke. See Note 1, p. 57. Compare the admiration expressed 
for Bolingbroke in this concluding address to him, with the abuse of Marl- 
borough in the passage lines 285 to 298. The latter, notwithstanding his 
vices, deserved better of his country than the former. 

2 " To fall with dignity, with temper rise," alludes to the varying political 
fortunes of Bolingbroke. " With temper," i.e., with equable temper. 

3 " Pretend," i.e., set forth. 

4 " Urged by thee." Pope is said to have received the subject matter of 
An Essay on Man from Bolingbroke. 



Eclectic English Classics for Schools 



This series is intended to provide selected gems of English Literature 
for school use at the least possible price. The texts have been carefully 
edited, and are accompanied by adequate explanatory notes. They are 
well printed from new, clear type, and are uniformly bound in boards. 
The series now includes the following works 



omus, and 



Arno'd's (Matthew) Sohrab and Rustum 

Burke's Conciliation with the American Coloni 

Carlyle's Essay on Robert Burns . 

Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

Defoe's History of the Plague in London 

DeQuincey's Revolt of the Tartars 

Emerson's American Scholar, Self-Reliance, and Compensation 

Franklin's Autobiography 

George Eliot's Silas Marner . 

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield 

Irv'ng's Sketch Book — Selections 

Tales of a Traveler 
Macaulay's Second Essay on Chatta 

Essay on Milton 

Essay on Addison . 

Life of Samuel Johnson . 
Milton's L' Allegro. Ii Penseroso, 

Paradise Lost — Books I. and II. 
Pope s Homer'- Iliad, Books I., VI., XXII. 
Scc'.t c Ivanhof 

Marmion 

Lady of che Lake . 

The Abbot . 

Woodstock 
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar . 

Twelfth Night 

Merchant of Venice 

Midsummer-Night's Dream 

As You Like It 

Macbeth 

Hamlet .... 
Sir Roger de Coverley Papers (The Spectator) 
Southey's Life of Nelson 
Tennyson's Princess 
Webster's Bunker Hill Orations 



Lycidas 
and XXLv 



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An Introduction to the 

Study of American Literature 

BY 

BRANDER MATTHEWS 

Professor of Literature in Columbia University 

Cloth, 12mo, 256 pages - - - Price, $1.00 



A text-book of literature on an original plan, and conforming with 
the best methods of teaching. 

Admirably designed to guide, to supplement, and to stimulate the 
student's reading of American authors. 

Illustrated with a fine collection of facsimile manuscripts, portraits 
of authors, and views of their homes and birthplaces. 

Bright, clear, and fascinating, it is itself a literary work of high rank. 

The book consists mostly of delightfully readable and yet compre- 
hensive little biographies of the fifteen greatest and most representative 
American writers. Each of the sketches contains a critical estimate of 
the author and his works, which is the more valuable coming, as it does, 
from one who is himself a master. The work is rounded out by four 
general chapters which take up other prominent authors and discuss the 
history and conditions of our literature as a whole ; and there is at the 
end of the book a complete chronology of the best American literature 
from the beginning down to 1896. 

Each of the fifteen biographical sketches is illustrated by a fine 
portrait of its subject and views of his birthplace or residence and in 
some cases of both. They are also accompanied by each author's 
facsimile manuscript covering one or two pages. The book contains 
excellent portraits of many other authors famous in American literature. 



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ARNOLD'S SOHRAB AND RUSTUJV 
BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIAT! 
BURNS'S POEMS— Selections . 
BYRON'S POEMS— Selections . 
CARLYLE'S ESSAY ON ROBERT BURNS 
CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY TALES— Prologue a 
COLERIDGE'S RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 
DEFOE'S HISTORY OF THE ^AGUE IN LONDON 
DE QUINCEY'S REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
DRYDEN'S PALAMON AND ARC1TE . 
EMERSON'S AMERICAN SCHOLAR, SELF-RELIANCE, 

SATION 

FRANKLIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY .... 
GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER 
GOLDSMITH'S VICAR OF WAKEFIELD 

GRAY'S POEMS— Selections 

IRVING'S SKETCH-BOOK— Selections 

IRVING'S TALES OF A TRAVELER 

MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY ON CHATHAM 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON 

MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON ADDISON 

MACAULAY'S LIFE OF JOHNSON .... 

MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS, LYC 

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST— Books I and II . 

POPE'S HOMER'S ILIAD— Books I, VI, XXII, XXIV 

POPE'S POEMS— Selections ... 

SCOTT'S IVANHOE 

SCOTT'S MARMION 

SCOTT'S LADY OF THE I 

SCOTT'S THE ABHOT . . 

SCOTT'S WOODS! uLK . 

SHAKESPEARE'S JULIUS CAESAR . 

SHAKESPEARE'S TWELFTH NIGHT 

SHAKESPEARE'S MERCHANT OF VENICE -, 

SHAKESPEARE'S MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM 

SHAKESPEARE'S AS YOU LIKE IT 

SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH .... 

SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET .... 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS— (The Spectator) 

SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF NELSON 

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS . 

WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATIONS 

WORDSWORTH'S POEMS— Selections 



AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
New York ♦ Cincinnati • ■ -Chicago 



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